With student safety and wellness in mind, the Clarke Community School District and City of Osceola are exploring the option of a shared school resource officer.
An SRO is a sworn law enforcement officer assigned to a school district, and is generally contracted via a 28E sharing agreement with a city or county. Their role in the schools is for school safety, to investigate criminal matters, provide educational programming (such as D.A.R.E. programs) and promote positive relationships between themselves and students and staff. They don’t handle routine student disciplinary matters.
Discussions for such a position at Clarke schools have been going on for more than a year. In August 2024, a meeting was held with Osceola City Administrator Ty Wheeler, Osceola Mayor Thomas Kedley, local law enforcement and school leadership to discuss an SRO. At the Feb. 17 meeting of the Osceola City Council, Wheeler said that August 2024 conversation had ended with the need for follow-up regarding cost implications to the city and school, and he had not had conversation on the matter further.
However, an item on the agenda of the Feb. 9 meeting of the Clarke Community School Board showed it had continued to be a discussion there.
Agenda item
On the school board’s agenda was a sample 28E agreement between the city and school for an SRO. At the school board meeting, Clarke Superintendent Dr. Kurt DeVore said the 28E was before the board so they could get a look at it, but noted there was still much work to be done with the city if everyone chose to move forward with the idea.
“We’ve talked about this for 18 months so just trying to keep this ball moving and creating some of these documents as a first blush,” DeVore said.
School board members questioned job functions and pay, which DeVore said needed coordination with the city. It was anticipated that the SRO would move between the different campuses - elementary, high/middle school and administration - and be on campus about 75% of their scheduled work time.
It was agreed to table the discussion for the time being.
Similar sentiments were echoed at the Feb. 17 city council meeting.
“We need to have a conversation about the idea of, or interest in, having a school resource officer and what that means,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler presented the council with a copy of the sample SRO job description from the school, which listed the position as a “dual-reporting structure to the Chief of Police and CCSD Superintendent” ensuring that “safety strategies align with both municipal law and educational policy,” with core responsibilities of law enforcement and student safety, staff professional development and education and mentorship. District-specific duties included strategic leadership with the District Safety Committee, event security such as during home athletic events and graduation, and traffic management to oversee the safety of students and pedestrians on Highways 34 and 69 and school access roads during peak traffic hours.
Osceola Police Chief Marty Duffus said the conversation had been ongoing for awhile, but felt the sample job description needed some re-work.
“This person is our employee,” Duffus said. “They’ll adhere to our standards and our policies and procedures and that’s the way it’ll work.”
He stated that while the SRO would likely take over the D.A.R.E. program and maybe take on some instructional duties, their main role is that of safety and any sort of criminal enforcement.
SRO need?
The need of an SRO was discussed at the city council meeting.
Duffus said when he looked at calls made in the last calendar year, from January to December 2025, police were on campus - be that high school, middle school, elementary or administration buildings - 173 times. He did not delve further into what the calls to the schools had been for, noting officers respond to all ambulance as would the SRO, but the calls to the school could have been tobacco-related, vaping, fighting and so forth.
“I was a little surprised when I started doing the math and figured out that we were 173 times in a year,” Duffus said. “That’s likely more than one of us, because there’s calls that require two of us - if there’s a fight we’re not going to go on our own.”
Kedley spoke to the benefits of having an SRO from both a student and an educator perspective.
“I had one growing up in my school - it was a big help, it made you not afraid of law enforcement from K through 12. You develop relationships, there’s counseling opportunities,” he said. “We want police in our buildings as much as we can, high-fiving people, walking hallways, shaking hands – it’s an element of safety.”
Duffus agreed with the counseling aspect of an SRO, saying the D.A.R.E. officer who teaches sixth graders the program has built good relationships with students at the school, providing support to for both school and non-school situations.
Logistics
As a shared position, Duffus and Wheeler said a typical allotment would be the 75/25 split, with the SRO spending 75% of their time in the schools and 75% of the costs being the school’s responsibility. Councilwoman Sonya Hicks asked how an SRO would work for school activities, which Duffus said would be worked out in the 28E. He said one scenario might be if an SRO worked at a school event in the evening, they would shorten their hours during the day.
Kedley asked what all the SRO would take over, as some of the duties described in the job description are currently handled by the school’s liaison officer and Osceola emergency personnel. Duffus said that would likely be determined as what was most beneficial to both parties. The mayor asked if the SRO would be a new employee - citing the need to think of salary and benefits - or a current member of the police force. Duffus replied it would have to be a new person.
“I don’t have the numbers to just slide somebody off,” he said.
While there might be initial concerns about filling the role, Duffus felt they could eventually get there.
To Wheeler, that was concerning from a budget standpoint.
“I put a budget out which has no mention of SRO… I do think that has to be planned for,” Wheeler said.
Repeating that the SRO discussion was still in the conceptual stages, council approved city staff to move forward with investigating an SRO position.
An SRO requires additional officer training, such as completion of the National Association of School Resource Officers basic training course. According to the NASRO’s website, course participants learn “relevant public safety topics, such as digital safety, human trafficking, mental health and substance abuse, and… learn best practices for de-escalation, behavioral threat assessment, emergency operations planning and armed assailant response.”
The sample job description from the school also stated a requirement of I Love U Guys Foundation certification.