MPS working on plan for school resource officers 9 months after state deadline

Milwaukee Public Schools students are less than a week from the start of the new school year.

A school district leader says it will begin without school resource officers. State law required MPS to have 25 school resource officers in place nearly nine months ago.

An MPS spokesperson wouldn’t provide a timeline for when S.R.O.’s will return to MPS.

A school board member says the soonest that could happen is late fall. He says the district is still trying to figure out how much this will cost and who’s supposed to pay for it.

MPS parent Porscha Newton sees the pros and cons of school resource officers, but she thinks that if students are expected to meet school deadlines, MPS should be held to the same standard as state law.

"If they're gonna have them, then I think they need to be in place by the beginning of the school year so that everyone could get accustomed and adjusted to it,” Newton said.

As an MPS employee, Dililah Frank says she’s seen situations get out of hand that required a police response.

"It's been times where students didn't want to come out,” she said. “Security didn't want to, they were scared to come out and approach different situations on our property."

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MPD data shows in the fall of 2022, MPS high schools called police more than 700 times.

MPS stopped putting officers inside schools back in 2016. It cut its contract with MPD in 2020 to have officers outside of schools.

As part of the state legislature’s agreement with Milwaukee to add a sales tax, lawmakers mandated MPS to have 25 school resource officers in place by January 1. That state law didn’t outline any sort of punishment for MPS missing the deadline.

MPS says it plans to redefine the previous role of school resource officers ‘with a focus on restorative and responsive cultural in our schools.’

Interim Superintendent Eduardo Galvan wouldn’t elaborate on what that means.

"Obviously with everything that happens with law enforcement in our community, we want to make sure that they're seen as a positive,” he said.

School board member Henry Leonard was willing to share a few more details that are still in discussion.

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"Officers would be preferably placed outside of buildings at arrival times and dispersal times and if there are situations where they need help gain some kind of control in a building when something should happen,” he said.

Leonard says he’s met with hundreds of parents on S.R.O.’s. He even traveled to Georgia with Police Chief Jeffrey Norman to see how other large public school districts run their SRO programs. He hopes to copy some of their policies.

"Their SROs are more directly related to issues in buildings, they're more like a support staff in there, and really from what I saw and observed, most of what they do from what I saw was more like well-trained, armed safeties,” Leonard said.

Leonard says MPS has agreed to pay for officers to be specially trained, but he says it’s yet to be sorted out who is on the hook to pay for the officers’ salaries.

"The state didn’t give us any direction on it,” he said. “They said MPD and MPS, you work this out."

“What would you say to parents who think this should have already happened?” reporter Ben Jordan asked.

“Sorry, I know it's difficult,” Leonard replied. “I know it's very difficult."

State Representative Bob Donovan was one of the Republican lawmakers who advocated for this mandate.

"Why they are dragging their feet is beyond me,” he said.

He says MPS, MPD, and the city have known about this requirement for more than a year now, offering ample time to sort out any issues.

“What could the state do to hold MPS accountable?” Jordan asked.

"We may indeed have to revisit this agreement and add some teeth to it,” Donovan replied. “I certainly would be one having no problem with that."

The Milwaukee Police Department declined my interview request. A spokesperson says they’re in communication with MPS about fulfilling this requirement.

MPS is expected to provide an update on their progress at a school board meeting Thursday night.

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