The role of Montgomery County’s Community Engagement Officers, or CEOs, in the county school system is being discussed following the February shooting of a Wootton High School student.
In 2021, Montgomery County shifted from the school resource officer model, where SROs were placed in each high school, to the CEO model that specified that officers would be assigned to a high school, but would also be responsible for security coverage for elementary and middle schools that feed into that high school.
As part of its “safety and security update” in April, the Montgomery County school system released results from its survey for recommendations to the CEO program.
According to that survey, about 33% of families favored having an officer in each high school, “all day, every day,” while 28% of school-based administrators agreed. When it came to school-based staff — other than administrators — 37.5% favored that approach.
‘Carefully selected’
Lt. Pamela Revels, with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office in Alabama and president of the National Association of School Resource Officers, said in an interview with WTOP that having clearly defined roles for police in schools is vital.
“When our parents, our caregivers, guardians, send their young people to school, they are expecting them to come back same way they went — mentally, physically and emotionally,” she said.
Revels said successful SRO programs keep priorities in focus.
To make sure an officer is suited for the role of an SRO, Revels said they have to be “carefully selected, specifically trained and properly equipped.”
She said that while schools across the country invest in building design and high tech equipment, like weapons detection systems, “you can put all these things in place, but it’s really the human factor that makes the difference.”
An SRO, Revels said, must be patient, supportive and meet students where they are, never forgetting that they’re adolescents.
Revels said that the qualities that officers need to have include “being very flexible, being understanding, being patient, but also being able to perform the ultimate goal” of taking action if the school faces a threat like an active shooter.
Some against the idea of having police in schools challenge the assertion that SROs prevent school violence. But Revels said when students trust the officers, they often share information that the school can use to identify and address problems earlier.
In all cases though, Revels said that the memorandum of understanding that is worked out between schools and police departments must be well-defined and, “educators should know how and what we’re supposed and allowed to do,” to avoid situations where police enforce school discipline.
Asked about where discussions about the status and roles of CEOs in Montgomery County Public Schools are moving, spokesperson Liliana Lopez wrote in an email to WTOP, “We are committed to a collaborative process. During our April 21 testimony to the County Council, we addressed the resource constraints identified by both MCPS and MCPD. The Board of Education would need to convene and provide formal recommendations to the Executive and our police partners. To honor the MOU and our partnership with all Montgomery County law enforcement agencies, we will engage our police partners from the very beginning.”
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