Straw poll shows members prefer to focus on prevention, mental health counseling
By Jason Emerson
The Cazenovia Board of Education had extensive discussions about school safety and security during its March 26 board meeting, and unofficially agreed that hiring one or more school resource officers (SROs) for the district was not something they wanted to do — at least not for the 2018-19 budget/school year.
While board members said they saw certain benefits to security officers in buildings, they preferred the idea of focusing funding and energy on prevention items such as increasing counseling and outreach opportunities and addressing students’ social and emotional wellness.
“Introducing guns into our schools [through an SRO] is creating a risk that doesn’t exist currently,” said board member Mark Goris. “I don’t know of any evidence that exists to show the benefit of [having an SRO]. … We’re talking about police officers, maybe we should be talking about counselors.”
“Safety is an important goal for us … I’d be for giving [SROs] a try,” said board member Leigh Baldwin. “We’re not reinventing the wheel; lots of schools have it; it’s a tool we can use.”
A straw poll of the board showed five members opposed to hiring an SRO, one in favor and one not ready to make any decision.
The issue of safety and security in the Cazenovia district has been the primary topic of discussion for weeks since the school shooting in Florida — as it has been for every school district in America. The district held a School Safety Forum on March 21, the results of which were hung around the board room Monday night in the form of poster pages filled with forum attendees’ input on strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats to keeping students safe.
The meeting began with a presentation from New York State Police Trooper Jack Keller on the SRO programs the state police previously ran through the Troop D barracks — before the grant funding ran out. Keller said the SROs were always trained police officers — could be active duty or retired, employed by the local police or by the school district — who acted not only as security but also as educators, counselors and confidants to students.
He said the state police found that two-thirds of the SROs’ work was as more of a counselor while the other one-third was more about being a police officer. Issues SROs faced were often about suicidal tendencies, bullying, sexting and problems at home, Keller said. The SROs also helped districts prepare evacuation plans, prepare for emergencies and otherwise deal with law enforcement and safety issues.
Keller said the most important piece of having a successful SRO program in any school district is to have support from the administration and the school board. “That’s probably the biggest thing,” he said.
Keller said the previous SRO programs run through Troop D were “very successful,” and had no failures they could see, it just ended because the state grant money funding it ran out.
Superintendent Matt Reilly focused his monthly report on school security. He said the district has been enhancing and improving school security for years, not just recently in light of the recent school shootings around the country. In the past two years, the district has spent nearly $400,000 on safety and security issues such as hiring mental health experts and counselors, improving physical security in school buildings and increasing the number of extracurricular activities for students.
Reilly also reviewed the March 21 forum for the board and called it “an extremely positive event” that generated “a lot of tremendous feedback.” He said all the input gathered from the forum has been coded and transcribed and will be posted on the district website by the end of this week.
The board then discussed the possibility of hiring one or more SROs for the district, and if the funding for such positions should be added to the budget currently being crafted for the 2018-19 school year.
Reilly said there was not an “overwhelming” response by the community in favor of an SRO at the March 21 safety forum, while board President Jan Woodworth agreed that as far as she and other board members have experienced, there is “no great clamor” in the community for hiring resource officers.
In addition to Goris’ remarks that having officers with guns in school introduces danger and is not proven to stop attacks — remarks others on the board stated or nodded agreement with — members Lisa Lounsbury and Jennifer Parmalee advocated a stronger focus of the district on the mental health aspects of school safety by promoting and fostering more counseling and outreach for students.
Parmalee, who works professionally as the deputy commissioner for the department of children and family services in Syracuse, said SROs are “limited” in their effectiveness in that they can only make arrests or talk to parents, while the district could better spend its money on making connections with organizations that promote mental health. She also asked why the district does not just increase its relationship — or create a “special relationship” — with the Cazenovia Police Department and have its officers have a greater presence in the district schools.
Reilly said he had consulted with Police Chief Michael Hayes on this and was told the police have neither the funding nor the personnel to give any extra attention to the schools.
In the end, the board members agreed unofficially not to add any SROs to the district budget for the upcoming year and to further pursue the idea of increased mental health counseling for students.
A straw poll of board members on the issue of hiring SROs showed that only Baldwin supported the idea, while members Goris, Lounsbury, Parmalee, Woodworth and David Mehlbaum all opposed the idea currently. Member Lou Orbach said he was not ready to make a decision on the issue, even for a straw poll.
They all agreed to continue discussing the issues of safety and security in the district, and Woodworth said greater input from the community to board members on what the residents want is encouraged.
