The up-Island regional school committee voted Monday to remove a much-debated school resource officer position from their $10.7 million draft budget, following another lengthy discussion on the financial plan for 2016.

School committee member Jeffrey (Skipper) Manter 3rd, who is also a West Tisbury police sergeant, made a motion Monday night that if the towns decide they need a school resource officer to be present at the Chilmark School and the West Tisbury School, the position will be funded through the police departments or the towns, not the school budget.

The committee had initially budgeted $65,000 plus benefits for a proposed joint position, where one West Tisbury police officer would work part-time and one Chilmark police officer would work 15 hours.

On Monday, committee chairman Michael Marcus said that while he favors the idea of assigning a school resource officer to the up-Island schools, public safety doesn’t fall under the committee’s jurisdiction. “We’re being asked to make decisions on how we provide this resource to the school and it makes me uncomfortable,” Mr. Marcus said. “I think the police department needs to determine this for its town . . . I don’t like this responsibility for us.”

Committee member Robert Lionette agreed. “It’s not our financial obligation at all. Our obligation is to have our leaders work with the police department, the financial piece is not ours,” he said.

After reflecting on last week’s meeting, committee member Theresa Manning said she now believes the police department should have the most responsibility for funding the school resource officer, but that training for the new job should come from up-Island school district budget.

“We can’t afford it,” said Mr. Manter.

With the budget going up about a $1 million both of the last two years, “there are missing pieces in the puzzle,” he said.

In the end, removing the position from the budget passed 3-2, with Mr. Manter, Mr. Marcus and Mr. Lionette voting in favor, and Mrs. Manning and Katherine DeVane opposing.

West Tisbury School principal Donna Lowell-Bettencourt said she would share the information with West Tisbury police chief Dan Rossi. “What if we were to jointly put a warrant article together so that tax payers could see what its for, submitted by both the schools and the police department,” she said.

In other business, the committee approved using up to $18,520 from school choice funds to pay for designing the West Tisbury school playground. Ms. Lowell-Bettencourt presented the group with examples of plans from the Natural Playgrounds Company in Concord, N. H., and said she would update the committee when she receives bids from other companies as well as progress on the design aspect of the project.

“We’re getting that much closer to our playground,” Mr. Marcus said.

The committee meets again on Dec. 15 in West Tisbury.