Cherokee County needs school resource officers

    A local student recently agreed to fill a classmate’s water bottle. After the classmate drank from it, the young girl joked that she had filled the bottle with water from the toilet.
    While that incident may draw a chuckle or two, school officials did not take it lightly.
    “There were hours spent reviewing tape and interviewing other kids,” Cherokee County Schools Superintendent Jeana Conley said. “The results were inconclusive. The girl carried the bottle into the bathroom, but we don’t have cameras in there. And there was no camera pointed at the water fountain.”
    Since school resource officers could not conclude whether the young girl was simply joking about filling the bottle with toilet water, officials disciplined her for the amount of time it took to investigate the incident.
    “If she had done that, it would’ve been a felony; it’s food tampering,” Conley said. “Since we couldn’t really prove it, we disciplined her for creating a disruption to the educational environment.”
    That’s just one example of the type of incidents school resource officers handle on a daily basis throughout the year, in addition to typical youth issues such as fights, bullying, vaping, thefts
or drugs and alcohol use. Making matters even more complicated, the district
today only employs nine SROs to cover all 12
schools.
    The district’s budget supports 10 school resource officers, and the open position is listed online. Candidates must be willing to complete Basic Law Enforcement Training.
    “We have been able to go ahead and hire them while they go through BLET, as long as they commit to working for us for a couple of years,” Conley said. “We will initially hire them as a security guard, so they wouldn’t have a badge or a weapon. But they would have a uniform and a radio and work security for us until they finish BLET. Then they’ll get their weapon, badge and a raise.”
    During the 2018-19 academic year, those nine SROs collectively conducted at least 71 investigations, according to statistics provided to the Cherokee Scout through a public records request. Twenty-eight of those investigations resulted with officials filing a juvenile petition, which is the equivalent of an arrest for a minor. Ten of those investigations were referred to an outside law enforcement agency.
    “A lot of times, these things just result in disciplinary action with the principal,” Conley said.
    In addition to investigating reported misconduct that happens on campus, SROs sometimes probe matters that happen off campus, such as online bullying via social media that may have occurred after school hours, but still affects the educational environment.
    School resource officers must also attend school sports activities, visit student’s homes, give outside presentations to the public and participate in critical
incident drills. Last year, SROs participated in 82 such drills.
    “Every school is supposed to do two of those a year,” Conley said. “We do them at [each individual] building because you would behave differently in each building. An active shooter in the cafeteria is a totally different experience than in the classroom.”
    Cherokee County school resource officers started teaching DARE – Drug Abuse Resistance Education – to fifth-graders this year. They also transport students who don’t have other options.
    “A lot of times, foster kids don’t have the availability to go to practice or do something [extracurricular], so we handle that,” Conley said.
    To view all open positions in the school district, visit www.cherokee.k12.nc.us/apps/pages/employment or call Kim Gibson at 837-2722.