OKLAHOMA CITY (Free Press) — The Oklahoma Metropolis Faculty District Board of Schooling permitted a finances of $2 million for its Faculty Useful resource Officer contract with the Oklahoma Metropolis Police Division (OKCPD) for the subsequent faculty 12 months beginning July 1.
Eighteen OKCPD officers will likely be SROs in this system.
The contract requires supervision of these officers by two lieutenants supplied by OKCPD. The lieutenants will likely be devoted to main the SROs and holding common briefings with the officers.
A captain within the OKCPD will supervise your complete program in tandem with Joseph Slawinski, Director of Safety for OKCPS who answered our questions Monday after the Board of Schooling assembly the place the safety finances was permitted.
The SRO duties will embody common responsibility for 185 faculty days along with pay for responsibility at sporting occasions and different actions after common class hours. The contract additionally contains augmenting district safety officers at Faculty Board conferences.
An Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Deputy will likely be SRO at Spencer Excessive Faculty within the unincorporated a part of Japanese Oklahoma County and out of doors the jurisdiction of the Oklahoma Metropolis limits and OKCPD. That SRO will likely be paid below a separate contract.
Clarified objective
In recent times OKCPS has clarified what is predicted of SROs due to native and national criticism that SROs had been making too many arrests of scholars for easy self-discipline issues that ought to have been dealt with by academics and principals.
Ultimately, zero-tolerance self-discipline insurance policies and police being requested to arrest college students for what was self-discipline points had been seen as heavy contributors to the “school-to-prison pipeline,” the idea that harsh faculty self-discipline doesn’t construct relationships and results in college students being arrested at a better price out and in of college. The outcomes had been extra college students of coloration and people from decrease financial teams going to jail at progressively earlier ages.
Within the early days of SRO applications within the metro, a single SRO primarily labored on the route of the principal of their constructing. If a principal was ineffective, the drift began rapidly towards having the SRO arrest college students as an alternative of the academics and directors utilizing well-researched self-discipline ideas that might construct higher relationships with college students.
However, OKCPS has been engaged on large conceptual adjustments to this system lengthy overdue.
In accordance with Slawinski, final 12 months the district employees and academics labored collectively to develop a transparent set of expectations for the SROs to concentrate on security and resist the temptation to tug them into self-discipline enforcement.
Help
“The gist of it’s mainly the SRO is there for help, initially, to guard property, OKCPS workers, guests and college students,” stated Slawinski. “They’re not there as a watchdog. They don’t have something to do with faculty self-discipline, and that’s good.”
The OKCPD offering the direct day-to-day supervision from division lieutenants devoted to the SROs holds promise for getting them out of the self-discipline loop and centered on security and safety.
“We wish to make the SRO approachable,” stated Slawinski who added that college students have to really feel snug sufficient with the SRO to allow them to know when a harmful scenario could also be growing.
“It’s the identical factor pretty much as good group policing,” he stated. “I’ve to construct rapport with the general public.”
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Final Up to date June 29, 2023, 9:58 PM by Brett Dickerson – Editor
The put up OKCPS to spend $2 million on revamped school resource officer program appeared first on Oklahoma City Free Press.
