By AMY JONES / Associate Editor

HOOVER — Hoover City Schools will have a police presence in every school after the Hoover City Council passed a resolution to help fund four full-time police officers during its Jan. 8 meeting.

Hoover Mayor Gary Ivey said the four new positions will be filled by officers on reserve with the Hoover Police Department.

“The four additional people will enable us to have a minimum of one officer in every school, every day,” Ivey said. “This is for a comfort level for our students and parents, as well as every teacher.”

Ivey said the new officer positions will be funded jointly by the city and the school system. The city’s portion of the funding is capped at $100,000 for the remainder of the fiscal year, according to the resolution.

The four positions are considered temporary positions, as the resolution only funds them through the end of the fiscal year, Ivey said.

“It’s approved through October, then we’ll obviously review it,” Ivey said.

Funding the four additional positions means officers can be in the schools without cutting other services, he said.

“We needed the additional officers to make it work shift-wise without pulling people off the street and cutting services,” Ivey said.

The school system already had full-time school resource officers in the middle and high schools, so the resolution will help fund a police presence in the system’s elementary and intermediate schools.

Police officers were temporarily placed in the system’s elementary and intermediate schools after a gunman killed 20 children and seven adults, including himself, during a Dec. 14 rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

The officers will be on school campuses for the duration of every school day, Ivey said.