A proposal from Rundlett Principal Jay Richard to add a school resource officer at the middle school — costing roughly $100,000 — has met resistance from school board members and parent.

Richard and other administrators argued that adding the position would mean more coordinated, thorough and familiar support to students in challenging situations in and outside of school. Hesitant members of the school board have questioned whether those services could instead be addressed by hiring another social worker or, to the extent that consistency in law enforcement relationships is helpful, why it falls to the school district, rather than the police department, to better coordinate case management for Concord’s families.

“I’ve seen the positive benefits of it in my career,” Richard said. In addition to his positive experiences with resource officers as a principal in other districts, he said he had heard from people in Concord who have wanted one at Rundlett for some time.

The board’s decision, as part of budget talks, in the end may come down to a cost-benefit trade-off.

“From a financial standpoint, are the benefits of an SRO, when compared to relying on off-site police, worth the $100,000 expense?” asked board member Jim Richards.

Members of the public during the hearing said that, for students, they saw far more costs than benefits.

“It seems like perhaps we want the feeling of safety, but I have not seen ever any data that shows it would make it more safe,” parent Elizabeth Lahey said. “There are these broad statements about relationship building and supporting community and I don’t really know what that means.”

The district has more pressing educational needs, she said.

“It is not the school’s job to build the relationship between students and the police officers,” Lahey said. “ The police have their own $16 million budget, and if they would like to rehabilitate their reputation and standing in the community, they can do that.”

Concord Police are already regularly working with Rundlett staff and students, Richard said in a March 6 presentation to the board. By adding a resource officer, all parties would benefit from increased consistency: student stress could be eased by working with a familiar face, staff would have a singular person to communicate with and police would have one designated officer to notify of things happening in the city that may be acutely impacting a student.

For example, earlier that day Richard had called a Concord officer to work with a parent who “needs immediate help.” Following up on that incident, he would have to call Concord Police again, and might get a different officer. While speaking highly of them all, Richard said he had worked with at least a dozen different officers in those kinds of situations.

“It’s not as if they’re not already connected in some way,” said Quinci Worthey, the district’s Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice, speaking in support of the proposal. “But this is, I think to his point, a more consistent touch point.”

“The SRO is not there to do my personal security for the building, not there to do my discipline. They’re not there for if a student is having an outburst or being disorderly. That’s what you pay me, you pay my assistant principals for; that’s why we have counselors, social workers,” Principal Tim Hebert said of the role at Concord High. “The SRO is our community partner who’s at the table to help us in areas of expertise we don’t have,” including their awareness of how to connect with outside support organizations and navigate legal systems.

Board President Pam Walsh acknowledged those benefits but wondered why that responsibility fell to the school payroll.

“It seems to me that they need a juvenile case worker at the Concord Police Department as opposed to an SRO in our middle school,” Walsh said. “That seems like what we’re looking for.”

Under the agreement between Concord Police and the district, the district pays 75% of the cost for an officer stationed in school during the school year and has input in selecting who is chosen for the position.

Richard and Hebert described how resource officers serve a niche role that encompasses parts of both police-centric work, like improving building safety procedures and emergency response times, and guidance work, like being a “trusted adult presence” kids can go to with questions or help when dealing with issues of family or substance abuse in their lives.

Worthey said he is generally skeptical of resource officers but has been “pleasantly surprised” with how the role has operated in Concord.

“I’m not pro-SRO by any means,” he said. But, speaking of officer Paige Salmon, “she is a good example of what the right person in that role can do.”

Worthey described how he and Salmon had been able to educate one another about the challenges and options before the students they interacted with. He also said he had observed administrators actively discouraging staff from involving Salmon in disciplinary situations.

Several board members appeared to remain unconvinced that adding a resource officer at the middle school was worth the costs — both financial and, potentially, cultural.

“I feel like all of the roles you’ve explained could be fulfilled by someone that is not also employed by the Concord Police Department,” Sarah Robinson, most vocally against the proposal in talks so far, said to Richard.

“This position worries me incredibly in the way that, we have systems that have not been reformed. And welcoming those systems to co-mingle without true reform, or proof of reform, feels irresponsible.”

Board member Cara Meeker echoed that concern. While the officer at the high school might represent a “best case scenario,” she said, she had heard from both students and parents who continued to feel that interactions with a police officer in school made some students feel less comfortable and less safe, and who said they had been discouraged when trying to express those concerns.

Concord has been chewing on whether to have a resource officer — or how to improve the role — for several years.

When an officer left the position in 2021, the board took on the debate directly. Current and former students raised alarms about the climate created by a police presence in school and its perpetuation of disciplinary inequities and asked the board not to rehire a resource officer.

A task force on discipline that included members of the public was asked to review the resource officer position and potential alternatives, in addition to its work examining and making recommendations about the school’s disciplinary system and how to make it more equitable for students of color and students with disabilities.

The task force eventually recommended that the district scale back to the role of the school resource officer and consider making it part-time, instead adding other professionals trained in mental health and de-escalation.

Members of that committee testified at a district budget hearing Monday night, the first of two, that they felt it was disingenuous to add another resource officer when the district had not meaningfully adopted their recommendations from two years ago.

Barry Lawrence, a parent of recent alumni who served on the task force, said it had been disbanded after releasing preliminary recommendations — before its members felt its work was done.

“We went through quite a bit of work to come to those recommendations,” Lawrence said. “Pretty much everything remained status quo.”

In response to Lawrence’s testimony, Walsh said that changes at the high school — including greater focus on restorative justice — had come from the work of the task force.

For Lahey, who also served on the task force, more work needs to be done before adding a second officer.

“We’d be paying $200,000, give or take, for an SRO to perform what seems to me to be a very undefined job — and that’s not really great use of taxpayer dollars,” Lahey said.

The board will take further public input at a hearing Wednesday evening at the Beaver Meadow School. It will have an additional budget work session before it is slated to vote on the budget, which currently includes adding a middle school resource officer, on March 27.