Committee agrees on school safety

Alexis Barker
NLJ News Editor
 
The consensus of those participating in a committee to address student safety in Weston County School District No. 1 is that the main objective should be obtaining or allocating funds for a school resource officer. The meeting was held on Feb. 18,
The group consists of school trustees, Superintendent Brad LaCroix, Newcastle City Council members, several parents involved in a parent committee, Deputy County Attorney Jeanie Stone, Sheriff’s Deputy Chris Case, Emergency Management coordinator Gilbert Nelson and Newcastle Police Chief Jim Owens. The group discussed several issues facing potential resource officers and the community. City council members, as well as Owens, left the meeting early to attend the regularly scheduled City Council meeting.
According to LaCroix, Nelson had helped locate two grants, both of which are federally funded, that the school district was eligible to apply for, one that would address personnel and the other for equipment funding. The agreement at the end of the meeting was for the school district, with the help of Nelson and Stone, to apply for the two grants to help fund a school resource officer for the Newcastle High School/Middle School and Newcastle Elementary School, one for each building. 
“The only downside is that the grants are due on March 3,” LaCroix said. “If it is something we want to do, we have to get moving quickly.” 
Nelson pointed out that once the grant is over, then you either lose that position or find the funds elsewhere. The group decided that future funding could be addressed if the grants were received in the first place. 
Stone agreed to help LaCroix complete the grants, saying that she had dealt with juvenile issues while serving as the Campbell County attorney and as district attorney for the past 20 years. 
Officers filling the resource officer position must be hired through the police department, she said, although funding can come from other sources. She explained that in Gillette when the funding received for the resource officers ran out, the county, city and school district came together to determine how they could continue the program. 
“It took a lot of coordination, but we ended up pointing out that a third of the population is in a certain location for a period of time,” Stone said. 
The need to protect the student population is real and that the children are facing issues amongst their peers and within themselves, she said. 
According to Stone, the local school district is facing a mental health issue in its student population that is similar to that
seen in larger cities, like Gillette. Since beginning her work in Weston County in August, she said, she has dealt with four or five incidents involving kids with “significant mental health issues.” 
“I am surprised by the number of kids with significant mental health issues, for a town this size,” Stone said. “I am really surprised that I have seen a handful of kids threatening other kids or creating hit lists. There have been four or five that I have been in contact with, and in Gillette I would expect to see four or five in a year.” 
According to Owens, one issue with creating a school resource officer in Newcastle is the lack of individuals to fill the positions already at the police department, let alone one more. 
“That is the reason we got rid of it before. … There was an extended period of time we couldn’t get seven officers, let alone an extra for the school resource position,” Owens said. “This is the first time in 10 years we have been at eight officers for over six months.” 
The inability to entice people to come to Newcastle for a job that might only last for one year is another issue, he said. 
“What we are doing is, three to four times a day we are having an officer spending time at the school,” Owens said. “These officers are interacting with the students. Two of them I know of are timing it so they are out at the playground with them, which is probably the highest security risk because they are outside, and exposed. That is what we are doing right now.” 
Owens said using volunteers to protect the schools is problematic. Such persons, if they carry a gun, would have to be POST-certified, a minimum training requirement for police officers in the state. POST is shorthand for the Wyoming Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission.
Despite the concerns over school resource officer funding, training and staffing, the group remained committed to hiring a school resource officer as the first option for addressing school safety and, if that goal could not be achieved, other options would have to be considered. 
Councilman Don Steveson suggested that the local governments propose the addition of a seventh penny tax that would be voted on by the public for the funding of resource officers. LaCroix noted that this would be a good way to gauge what the public’s feelings are on the need for officers in our schools. 
Several other cost-neutral options were presented during this meeting and will be covered in next week’s edition of the News Letter Journal.