ROBBINSDALE, Minn. — In about two months, thousands of students across Minnesota will return to the classroom from summer break.
Many of them, such as those in the state's largest school district Anoka-Hennepin, will encounter an armed school resource officer (SRO) staffed by their local law enforcement agency. Yet many others, such as those in Minneapolis and St. Paul Public Schools, will be greeted instead by unarmed security teams rather than SROs.
For the past three school years, the Twin Cities has served in some ways as the epicenter of the national debate over the role of police inside school buildings. Following the murder of George Floyd, Minneapolis, Hopkins and St. Paul became some of the first districts in the country to remove SROs from their buildings, although St. Paul temporarily added a police presence to some buildings last winter in response to a violent incident.
Now, with the 2023-24 school year approaching in a matter of weeks, the discussion about SROs is playing out again in the suburb of Golden Valley.
The Golden Valley Police Department, which has jurisdiction over two Robbinsdale Area schools, is working with the district on a plan to reinstate a school resource officer at Sandburg Middle School and Robbinsdale Academy-Highview. Though separate, the two schools are housed in the same building on Sandburg Lane in Golden Valley. An SRO has not served in this building for the past two years.
Golden Valley Police Chief Virgil Green, who has experience in school settings as the previous deputy chief of the Tulsa Public Schools campus department, supports the plan. Both the city council and school board must approve the contract for the SRO to begin working in the schools.
"There are a lot of parents who are concerned about some of the things that have happened this past school year, at Sandburg and at Highview. This is just going to really ease some of those concerns from the parents -- and especially the teachers there at the school, as well as the students -- to know there's a uniformed presence of a police officer to assist," Green said in an interview with KARE 11. "But mainly, that officer is going to be there to build relationships with those students and with the teachers."
According to documents filed ahead of a Golden Valley City Council work session on Tuesday, the district specifically requested the return of the SRO to Sandburg and Highview. A spokesperson for the Robbinsdale Area Schools said district leaders "have had productive conversations and are working together collaboratively with the City of Golden Valley to find solutions that are best for the Robbinsdale Area Schools community – staff, students and families."
If the plan is approved, this particular school resource officer would "not act as a school disciplinarian or enforcer of school regulations or use police powers to address school discipline issues," according to the proposed contract, but the officer could still respond "to potential offenses that require immediate intervention."
A police advisory group for the city, known as the PEACE Commission, opposes the plan. In a letter to the council, the group said an armed police officer would be a "detrimental decision that could have far-reaching and numerous unintended negative consequences for students, teachers, and the overall learning environment."
"That weapon is just part of the equipment that we have. I don't believe that's going to be a big barrier," Green said, while also noting the reality of school shootings as an argument for armed officers in schools. "We know that's one of the biggest things going on across the country."
This is hardly the first time a district has considered reinstating a school resource officer in a particular building.
Mo Canady, the executive director of the National Association for School Resource Officers, said he's noticed a shift in the conversation over the past year or so. Many school districts that initially removed SROs in 2020 have since reversed course, although there's no firm data on how many districts have made such decisions.
"We're seeing that very trend, the return of SROs to campus." Canady said, "where places like Fremont, Calif., and Alexandria, Va., turned those decisions around. And more recently, the Denver Public Schools voted to reinstate the SRO program. What I think happened here were a lot of unintended consequences."
As recently as 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice estimated that roughly 25,000 school resource officers were serving across the country, representing more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies.
But it's no secret that police departments have been plagued by staffing shortages since then, including Golden Valley, where the police chief said he has 13 officers on-duty out of 31 budgeted positions. That adds a twist to his department's plans for reinstating an SRO in Robbinsdale schools.
"We're going to be working with the school district, as they definitely understand our staffing," Chief Green said. "Whether that's a person that we have internally or whether that's someone we're going to have to hire and recruit and hire someone externally."
However, Green said that about a half-dozen officers are expected to join his ranks by the end of the summer.
"Our recruiting efforts are really great. Now we've just got to make sure we've got the right personnel," Green said, "that does have a background in school resource officers. Not just somebody we're going to pull from patrol."
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