School Police Are Vital but Costly

By Heather J. Carlson, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.

May 24–When it comes to protecting students, the Olmsted County sheriff is warning some area schools that they need to do more.

Sheriff Steven Borchardt said he is recommending that the Byron and Stewartville school districts each have a deputy — known as a school resource officer — working in their schools.

“I am asking our schools to seriously consider this,” Borchardt said. “We aren’t talking about more of what we’ve always done before. We’re talking about specifically addressing a brand-new challenge.”

Byron and Stewartville school officials agree that they would like to have a school resource officer. The challenge is figuring out how to pay for it.

“It’s definitely not something we have in our budget for the coming year,” said Byron Superintendent Wendy Shannon.

Three years ago, the Byron, Stewartville and Dover-Eyota school districts applied for a grant to fund a shared school resource officer. The districts didn’t get the grant. Shannon said the sheriff’s office is planning to make a proposal for a school resources deputy to the school board.

A school resource officer costs about $85,000, Borchardt said.

Stewartville Superintendent David Thompson said his district is exploring the idea of sharing the costs of a school officer with the city of Stewartville.

The Rochester public schools have had school liaison officers for 15 years, and several smaller districts in the region have added a police presence. Both the Pine Island and Kenyon-Wanamingo school districts contract with the Goodhue County Sheriff’s Office for a deputy in their schools. For seven years, a Dodge County deputy has served the county’s three school districts — Triton, Hayfield and Kasson-Mantorville.

“We’ve had students come to our school resource officer, and he has been able to thwart a number of potentially serious incidents in the schools. It’s an awesome program,” said Dodge County Sheriff Gary Thompson.

But the federal funding for Dodge County’s deputy will run out June 1, 2008. So county and school officials are now faced with the same problem as Byron and Stewartville — finding money.

While finding the dollars can be tough, Borchardt said, it is important that schools make the resource officers a priority. Besides working with students to stop problems before they start, a school officer can focus on planning for emergencies like a school shooting, he said.

“Just in the same way we are prepared for a tornado and practice tornado drills and exercise our sirens to make sure they work,” he said. “We would be foolish if we didn’t develop this level of planning for mass-casualty events in our schools when we are watching it take place around us.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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