Valley Grove School Board members will vote next week on a proposal to assign school resource officers to patrol the district’s elementary school and high school starting in January.
The agreement will run from Jan. 1, 2019, to June 30, 2020, if the board approves the proposed hirings. The officers will be supplied by the Venango County Sheriff’s Department.
“We are really happy to have this happening,” Superintendent Kevin Briggs said after the meeting. “We have been working on this for a while.”
One officer will remain on duty during the summer to cover school activities.
The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) website says a school resource officer is “by federal definition, a career law enforcement officer with sworn authority who is deployed by an employing police department or agency in a community-oriented policing assignment to work in collaboration with one or more schools.”
The website also says “a school resource officer is a commissioned, sworn law enforcement officer, not a ‘security guard.'”
The association also says, “The goals of well-founded SRO programs include providing safe learning environments in our nation’s schools, providing valuable resources to school staff members, fostering positive relationships with youth, developing strategies to resolve problems affecting youth and protecting all students, so that they can reach their fullest potentials. NASRO considers it a best practice to use a “triad concept” to define the three main roles of school resource officers: educator (i.e. guest lecturer), informal counselor/mentor, and law enforcement officer.”
Also approved were two fundraiser activities of the Valley Grove PTO – a “School Spirit” T-shirt sale and a coupon book sale for local businesses.
At the beginning of the meeting, Rocky Grove High School senior Josiah Montgomery gave a presentation and speech on the importance of students learning about and being involved with government.
