Longmont City Council is looking to extend a 25-year-old program that puts police officers into St. Vrain Valley School District classrooms to protect, counsel and mentor high school and middle school students.
The continued use of school resource officers, or SROs, will be reviewed tonight by council as part of a resolution approving an intergovernmental agreement between the city and the school district.
If the resolution is approved, the city will run counter to a recent decision by the Denver school board to ban all police officers from its buildings. Denver school officials said the presence of police officers intimidate students — especially minority students — and funding would be better spent on mental health counseling and de-escalation programs in schools, according to a report by CBS4Denver.
The Boulder Valley School District board in November decided to develop a new plan for the future of law enforcement on the district’s campuses and will end its current SRO program by January 2022, according to the Colorado Sun.
Moves against SROs come in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests in cities throughout the country and the death of George Floyd in May at the hands of police in Minneapolis.
Longmont Public Safety spokeswoman Robin Ericson in an email said the city has never considered ending or altering its SRO program, which began in 1996.
“SRO programs and what the SROs function is in the schools vary throughout the United States,” Ericson said.
SROs not only provide safety for students and staff at St. Vrain Schools, but also help educate and inform while in school hallways and classrooms, she said.
“The SROs’ first responsibility is to provide for the safety and security of the school, its students and staff,” Ericson said. “Secondly, they investigate anonymous tips, safety concerns and any reported violations of law.”
“SROs,” she added, “are also communicators and coaches that are able to teach, educate, inform and encourage.”
SROs are regular employees and certified Longmont police officers. Two SROs are placed at Longmont, Skyline and Silver Creek high schools for the 2020-21 school year, and one SRO is placed at Longs Peak, Westview, Trail Ridge, Olde Columbine/Sunset and Altona Middle schools and Trail Ridge Middle School, according to the city’s intergovernmental agreement with the school district.
Longmont and the school district share the costs of the SRO program. The school district paid over $928,000 for its portion of the SROs salaries and benefits for the 2020-2021 school year, the intergovernmental agreement states.
