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Acton and Boxborough school resource officers review year of in-school work and training
Summary
Detective A.J. Rotella and Boxborough SROs presented a year-end report describing training, daily duties, incidents logged and community outreach. Committee members asked about social media-related harms, restorative justice, data tracking, and how the memorandum of understanding affects information-sharing with schools.
Detective A.J. Rotella, the Acton school resource officer, told the Acton-Boxborough Regional School Committee on Monday evening that SROs see themselves as faculty partners and community resources rather than primary school disciplinarians.
"We are school resource officers. We are career law enforcement officers with sworn authority ... assigned by our employer, the police department, to collaborate with the schools," Rotella said, describing SRO duties and the training the officers receive.
The presentation summarized training (NASRO certification, annual conferences, ALICE active-shooter training, crisis intervention and suicide-prevention courses), year-to-date calls and program work: youth academy and summer internships, restorative-justice referrals, mental-health responses and digital-misconduct incidents. Rotella said the SRO team recorded zero arrests in school this year and zero shelter-in-place events at the time the slides were prepared, and outlined a restorative-justice approach to lower-level incidents as an alternative to criminal charging.
Committee members pressed SROs on topics raised repeatedly during the session: how social-media harms such as sextortion and digital extortion are covered in training, the SROs' role when incidents cross between school discipline and criminal thresholds, and whether the memorandum of understanding negotiated last year has improved or hindered information flow. Rotella and Boxborough SRO Dios "Ray" Marinoso said social-media training has increased as new apps and behaviors emerge and that the departments are pursuing more comparative trainings about online harms.
Rotella described the typical workflow when schools report vandalism, larceny or digital misconduct: school staff take an initial report, principals document the scene and notify SROs; officers review video if available and determine whether the incident meets the criminal threshold. For many incidents, school discipline remains the first response and officers serve in an advisory or restorative role.
Several committee members asked for comparative statistics across years. The SROs said this is the first year they have aggregated detailed logs of school activity in the manner shown and offered to provide year-over-year comparisons in future reports.
The SROs and committee members also discussed well-being checks, which officers said are used when school staff have a specific safety concern and cannot reach a student’s family. Officers said they typically check in with families and do not remove students from homes during those visits unless a separate legal threshold is met.
The presentation followed the memorandum of understanding negotiated last year; SROs said the MOU helped define roles but occasionally limits what school staff can share about a student’s history, which can complicate some responses. Rotella said the teams continue to work on annual reviews and training to refine the partnership.
The committee did not take a formal vote on the SRO presentation. Members encouraged continued annual reporting and requested more comparative data and documentation of the MOU’s review process in coming years.
