DALTON, Ga. — Dalton Public Schools would increase the number of police officers in schools from three to seven and spend more than $600,000 for security upgrades at Dalton High School under a draft budget presented to the school board Wednesday night.

The changes were outlined a month to the day after police said Dalton High School teacher Randal Davidson brought a pistol to school and shot a bullet through the window of his classroom. No one else was in the classroom at the time.

The school system currently has three school resource officers (SROs) — one each at Dalton High, Dalton Middle and Morris Innovative High School. Those officers also have responsibilities at the school system’s elementary schools. At the time of the shooting at Dalton High, which saw the school placed on lockdown and the evacuation of all students and staff, School Resource Officer Bart Chandler was at the middle school.

“I am excited we have had the opportunity to listen to our parents, our constituents and our students,” said board Vice Chairman Matt Evans. “They brought some great ideas. Our district staff and principals and school staffs have been phenomenal in reviewing our plans and seeing what we can do different and what we can do better. The board is going to make a substantial investment in capital improvements at all of our buildings across our district to make sure our kids are safer. We have learned a lot and we have gotten better.”

DPS video

The plan presented to the board members would have two SROs at Dalton High, which has a student population of around 1,800, and one each at Dalton Middle and Morris Innovative. The other three SROs would work at the system’s six elementary schools.

Included in the improvements at Dalton High are $350,000 for an upgrade to an all-digital public address system, $207,900 to upgrade to intruder locks on all classroom doors, $19,000 for media center doors and some exterior doors, $16,000 to add card access readers to exterior doors and $10,600 in upgrades to the guard shack at the entrance to the parking lot.

“We listened to those ideas and honor those and vetted those appropriately,” Evans said of the many ideas presented at two school safety forums held by the system and the students of Dalton High. “We were listening to all those things and taking them into consideration. We are all aimed at the same goal, which is improving our students’ safety and improving our school security.”

Those improvements would come from funds left over from the recently expired Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (ESPLOST), the fourth version of the ESPLOST that ended on Dec. 31. Other improvements — including $300,000 for public address improvements at Dalton Middle, improvements to all of the schools’ public address equipment, upgrading intruder locks at Dalton Middle and various other improvements to schools across the system — will cost more than $1 million and will be paid for out of ESPLOST V revenues and money from the $50 million general obligation bond voters approved for new school construction.

Facilities improvements at Dalton High School are being put in place since the funding is there. Other improvements would have to come with the approval of the 2018-19 budget.

At Wednesday night’s work session, Chief Financial Officer Theresa Perry presented the second budget draft to the board, which was missing Chairman Rick Fromm, who was out of town. A first public hearing on the draft budget is planned for April 17 and a second hearing will be held in May before the board can approve the budget.

The numbers Perry presented Wednesday include a proposed budget deficit of $636,090 with total revenues of $76.5 million from local, state and federal sources. Total expenditures are $77.2 million.

The budget calls for a 1 percent salary increase for employees, lowered class sizes with the addition of positions and an increase in retirement contributions by the system from 16.81 percent to 20.9 percent.

“I think that we have been very credible about streamlining our budget (in past years),” board member Tulley Johnson said. “The principals have done a wonderful job of every year so far coming under budget. It is time to implement some programs that are needed. We’ve been cutting since 2009. Now, we have a chance to implement some new programs. So we have to spend a little more money and we have the money at the present time. We are asking them to make our schools better, so how can you do that without having the right resources?”

The draft budget calls for cutting the system’s fund balance from $13.9 million to $13.3 million, which Perry said is still above the state-recommended reserve fund of 15 percent of the expected budget.