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Consultants recommend zone-based roaming SRO model and elementary safe-school coordinators; council votes to schedule joint meeting with county and school board
Summary
Consultants from the Science Policy Action Network presented a recommended school-resource-officer framework to Fayetteville City Council on March 3 that favors zone-based roaming SRO coverage, requires Safe Schools Coordinators at every school to triage incidents, and calls for recurring joint training.
Consultants from the Science Policy Action Network (SPAN) recommended a zone-based, roaming school-resource-officer (SRO) deployment and expanded use of Safe Schools Coordinators (SSCs) as the primary triage point for school safety incidents, during a March 3 presentation to Fayetteville City Council. After discussion, council accepted the consultants'report and voted to schedule a joint meeting with the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners and the Cumberland County Board of Education to discuss next steps and funding.
Dr. Richard Watkins, representing the consultant team, summarized the research: the team reviewed literature, analyzed state-consolidated incident data and interviewed local stakeholders including Fayetteville Police Department staff, Cumberland County Schools administrators and multiple school principals and staff. He said responses from the governing bodies were aligned on priorities. "When talking about what the SRO program should address, the primary need that the SRO program should address is youth safety," Watkins said, citing council and school-board interview responses.
Watkins presented three principal recommendations: (1) a roaming-zone deployment model where SROs patrol an assigned mix of elementary, middle and high schools and make routine check-ins from a nearby staging location; (2) designation of Safe Schools Coordinators in every school as the primary on-site point of contact to triage incidents and request SRO response when appropriate; and (3) standardized and recurring specialized training for SROs, SSCs and school personnel, including adolescent development, de-escalation, trauma-informed practices, juvenile law, crisis intervention and coordinated emergency-response drills.
The consultants flagged a specific operational gap: an elevated number of calls for service to elementary schools in Fayetteville compared with middle and high schools. Using the police department's call-for-service figures cited during the presentation, Watkins said elementary schools had 185 calls, middle schools 93 and high schools 172 (counts cited from the local quarterly report). He said many elementary schools lack SSCs (three of 30 elementary schools had an SSC at that time), which the consultants identified as a factor contributing to increased calls.
The presentation emphasized role clarity: SSCs should assess incidents and determine whether administrative, counseling/social-service or law-enforcement intervention is appropriate; SROs should respond to immediate safety threats. The consultants proposed quarterly or periodic joint reviews and an annual multi-agency safety meeting to align protocols, assess needs for physical controls (doors, gating), and measure program effectiveness.
Council members asked for additional data before committing to a long-term agreement, including comparisons with the historical SRO program previously run by the sheriff's office, disaggregated call-for-service data by school, and ratios for school nurses, counselors and mental-health staff. City staff and the chief of police said the city met its initial one-year commitment to place an SRO in each high school but acknowledged open questions about elementary coverage and supervisory staffing.
Council voted to accept the consultants'report and then approved a motion to schedule a joint meeting among the city council, county commission and county board of education (with invitations to sheriff and police leadership) to discuss scope, roles and funding. The joint-meeting motion passed 9-1 (Council Member Benavente recorded in opposition). Separately, council requested staff to gather more information on guidance-counselor/nurse/mental-health staffing ratios and to seek historical sheriff's-office SRO data before the joint meeting.
Ending: City staff will coordinate a joint meeting with the county and school board and provide the requested staffing and historical SRO data for council review before that meeting.
