The William Penn School District policy committee on June 5 reviewed proposed updates to Policy 805.2, School Security Personnel, which include a revised definition of "party vendor," updated training requirements for safety coordinators, changes to incident-reporting terminology and new provisional requirements for submitting court orders per state code.

Mr. Deans, a district staff member, highlighted the draft's effort to reflect local practice: "this policy specifically has a lot of references to, school police officers and school resource officers, so we ensure that the language in this policy is reflective of what we actually have here in our district, which is school safety officers. That's the biggest highlight that I would like to add." Several board members reiterated that the intent is not to signal the hiring of different personnel but to align terminology: "they tried very, very hard to make sure that the language was consistent with what we have, which are SSOs and not SROs," a board member said.

Committee members asked clarifying questions about the interplay between policy language and uniforms or insignia; Ms. Pratt, a staff member, noted the district recently updated uniforms so the new shirts say "school safety officer." The policy draft was noted as last updated April 11; no formal vote was taken at the meeting.

Next steps: staff will finalize the wording to consistently use "school safety officer" and return the policy at the next scheduled reading. No adoption vote occurred on June 5.