Armed police officers to return to some Fresno Unified middle schools next year
This story has been updated. Read the latest here.
Original story below:
The Fresno Unified School District board voted 6-1 to bring armed police officers back to some of the district’s middle school campuses starting in the 2022-23 school year.
Trustee Veva Islas was the only member to vote against the agreement.
The Fresno Police Department hasn’t had a contract for FUSD’s middle school campuses since the summer of 2020.
The contract addendum will provide five full-time Student Resource Officers to five middle schools, plus one sergeant to oversee these officers, at an annual cost of just over $1 million.
District spokesperson Nikki Henry wrote in an email to the Education Lab that the move is an upgrade from the previous Student Neighborhood Resource Officers (or SNROs) the middle schools had previously that were part-time. The SNROs split their time between schools and the surrounding neighborhood.
The addendum also comes with the goal of staffing all of Fresno Unified’s middle school campuses with at least one SRO by the start of the 2023-24 school year.
Board communications released June 10 said that SRO placement throughout the process will depend on “multiple data measures.” Staff announced Wednesday night that the Fort Miller, Tenaya, Terronez, Kings Canyon, and Gaston middle school campuses would be the first to receive SROs in 2022.
As with the district’s agreement with Fresno PD for its high school campuses, the new deal for the district’s middle schools also stipulates that the district publicly provide data on SRO-student interactions.
Wednesday’s vote is the board’s latest action in a years-long debate over the presence of armed police officers on campuses in Fresno, reignited recently by a string of safety incidents at schools around the district and the mass shooting at an elementary school last month in Uvalde, Texas.
The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab at its website.
This story was originally published June 15, 2022 at 9:20 PM.
