Jamestown School Board meets at Ring Elementary School
Jamestown Public Schools will be looking at adding another School Resource Officer who would provide support district wide.
School Superintendent Dr. Kevin Whitaker said the current School Resource Officer assigned to the High School acts in a police officer and safety role. He said the additional SRO would be more instructional and be available for students K through 12, “The officer would teach students in similar to a DARE program about drugs, similar to maybe with the little kids ‘stranger danger’ and things like that; road safety, those sorts of instructional things. We’d also teach adults about things things like potentially like gang related items, or what drugs look like, or what people under the influence of drugs look like.”
Whitaker said the SRO position would be included in the proposed 2022-23 budget for the school board to consider and then would be voted on by the public. If approved, notice would then be given to the Jamestown Police Department to go ahead and hire the new officer.
Jamestown City Council gave approval for the city to hire the school resource officer at its Monday voting session. If the school budget passes, the officer would begin work in August 2022. Jamestown Public Schools would reimburse the City of Jamestown for ten months of the cost for a police officer at $109,684. The City of Jamestown would be responsible for the officer’s salary for the two summer months that school is not in session for a cost of $21,936.
Leave a Reply