Community Resource Officers

Lake Washington School District (LWSD) continues to partner with all four local police agencies in our district for the 2023-24 school year. This year, the partnership will include Community Resource Officers to support students at all schools.

Each year, our partnership with our local police agency evolves as we rebalance our resources to enhance our layered approach to safety and security. Over the years, we have broadened our access to behavioral and mental health support for our students.

As we consider both our budget, and the budgetary and staffing needs of our local police agencies, we are reframing our partnership to ensure that the police officers serving our schools can impact all schools more – not just our comprehensive high schools. That is what we hope to accomplish with our Community Resource Officers program.

Having Community Resource Officers in our schools will allow LWSD to be more intentional around the support provided by, and relationship with, law enforcement, allowing trained law enforcement to support every school as needed.

Duties and expectations

Community Resource Officers

Primary duties to be performed by Community Resource Officers for each school

Each law enforcement agency will select a Community Resource Officer for each comprehensive high school feeder pattern. If additional law enforcement resources are available, the agency may assign other school-trained officers to provide additional services. The primary duties of these officers will be:

Child Protective Services (CPS) investigations
Participate in threat assessments, as needed or requested
Provide continuous support of district efforts to manage threats of violence or harm
Respond to 911 and other emergency calls at schools
Conduct scheduled safety assessments of school facilities at the request of district administration
Truancy paperwork service
No Trespass paperwork service
Respond to collisions that occur on campus
Provide support for traffic and pedestrian concerns in school zones
Collect/dispose of evidence/paraphernalia obtained during school operations
Provide educational support, if requested by building administration
Provide safety training for staff, students, parents and the greater community, as requested
Comply with district policies and procedures

District

Expectations of district

The district and schools will provide the following support and resources for the School Liaison Officer program:

Provide security access to schools and district facilities, including keys and access cards
Provide officers with private workspace in schools, when needed
Lead effort to develop and implement a Standard Operating Procedures Manual for clarification of duties and roles
Provide draft Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) each year for collaborative updates and renewals
Create data dashboard for law enforcement activities
Hold Community Connectors meetings to engage stakeholders regarding School Liaison Officer program

Law Enforcement

Expectations of law enforcement

The law enforcement partner will provide the following support and resources for the Community Resource Officer program:

Participate in continuous improvement of partnership
Attend district meetings, as requested
Participate in the development of a Standard Operating Procedures Manual
Ensure officers assigned to school support maintain specific training related to service to youth and schools
Collaborate with district on data collection
Participate in Community Connectors engagement meetings

Community Connectors

Lake Washington School District envisions a community that supports a unified definition of school safety, supports effective teaching and learning by creating and promoting a physically, emotionally, socially, behaviorally and academically secure climate for students, staff and visitors. Keeping our schools safe involves planning for prevention, mitigation, response and recovery. We have worked on building a thoughtful community engagement process to inform our district’s plans for school safety. Subsequently, we have used this process for the upcoming 2023-24 school year on our Community Resource Officer program, previously the School Resource Officer program.

Lake Washington School District is creating a new program called Community Connectors. This group will be made up of stakeholders and partners, as well as those individuals and organizations that we do not presently collaborate with, to gather information that will strengthen our school safety planning efforts.

Participants in the Community Connectors program will choose one of the following three tiers based on their desired involvement level:

Tier one

Be a Community Connector – This group will review current school safety plans and will connect to the broader community to gather the collective voices for input. This will involve three scheduled meetings: October 18, 2023, November 28, 2023 and April 18, 2024. During the period of time between November and April, this team will gather the input from the broader community and will report back the data collected in the April meeting.

Tier two

Be part of the consulting group – This group represents the broader community and will be those who want to participate in smaller focus groups, surveys or other methods of input. This will not require participating in the meeting structure, but rather will represent the community voice we want to hear.

Tier three

Be informed – This group represents those who are interested in and support the school safety plans for the district and would like to be kept informed of the progress of the Community Connectors by information through district communications.

If you would like to participate in Community Connectors, please RSVP to communityconnectors@lwsd.org and let us know which tier fits with you best.

Our vision is that Community Connectors has a broad and rich cultural membership, so if you are aware of another organization or individual that would be interested in participation, please forward this information to them. All voices are welcome and valued. We very much look forward to our collaboration.

FAQ

What does a typical day look like for a Community Resource Officer?

Proposed Daily Schedule/Routine:

It is impossible to plan each day as this role is built on responding to concerns and issues that arise. However, each officer should have a scheduled check-in with all schools in their area of responsibility.

Check in with each school by each of September
Support known traffic concerns in school zones
Respond to any emergency calls from schools
CPS Reports
Criminal Investigations
Check in with school contact
High School/Middle School
- Law enforcement concerns/questions
- Evidence/paraphernalia
- Educational support, as requested
Elementary School
- Law enforcement concerns/questions
- Bicycle/pedestrian safety
- Walk to School Week (Oct)
Partner with schools on Security Self-Audit (January – April)
Attend meetings, as requested
Participate in scheduled Threat Assessments

Why are you making this change to the School Resource Officers program?

The Community Resource Officer program has continued to evolve as we’ve expanded and made additional investments in other layers of safety for our students, particularly in the area of mental health. We value the partnership that we have with our police agencies and want to focus the time and attention of the trained resource officers on those areas that the police are uniquely positioned to support in all our schools from elementary to high school. The traditional model would have an officer at just a few of our schools and we want to ensure that all our schools are working with these officers to ensure that they are prepared for emergency response and threat assessment. We’ve continued to expand our investments in behavioral health supports and have reallocated some funding that was in the budget for resource officers but wasn’t being used due to staffing shortages in the police agencies to expand mental health clinicians in our middle schools.

Will students and staff be just as safe with the transition to the Community Resource Officers program?

Community Resource Officers are just one piece of the layered school safety model used in Lake Washington School District. We recognize that no single barrier or intervention is sufficient by itself to maintain a safe campus. Rather, we use multiple layers that act like filters to be able to identify, resolve and mitigate threats. At LWSD, we think about the following layers: Wellbeing, classroom safety, school safety, internal safety, external safety, cyber safety and safety management. Each of these layers has multiple components and taken together are designed to help keep our students, staff and visitors safe. Learn more about layered school safety.