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Superintendent outlines tighter SRO reporting, rotating elementary coverage and training
Summary
Binghamton School Superintendent Tanya Thompson told the council the district will collect more granular SRO contact data, seek ongoing restorative-practices training for officers, and pilot rotating SRO presence at elementary schools rather than assigning a dedicated officer to each building.
Tanya Thompson, superintendent of the Binghamton City School District, presented a district report on school resource officer (SRO) use and recommended changes to reporting and deployment.
Thompson said the district added a midyear SRO at the high school and plans to collect more detailed data about officer contacts "so that we can really understand that information," asking that reports provided to Lieutenant Landers include the nature of contacts, whether they were complaints, and how they were resolved. "I'd like to kind of firm up the complaints because they came in, and was just a number of complaints at each level. What does that really mean?" she said.
Thompson also urged ongoing restorative-practices and trauma-informed training beyond initial onboarding, and recommended rotating an elementary‑dedicated officer across buildings in an unpredictable pattern to increase community familiarity while avoiding assigning a single dedicated SRO to every elementary school. "To see them as members of our community, not just our school community, is something that we would encourage," she said.
Council members asked about funding, staffing and student comfort levels. A council member asked whether the fourth SRO would be funded the same way as the existing three; Thompson confirmed the district is funding the new position. Another member pressed for follow-up on incidents that had legal implications; Thompson said categories include harassment, welfare checks, domestic incidents and referrals and that the district would add clarifying buckets to the reports to enable better city‑side follow-up.
The superintendent said younger students reported higher comfort with SROs than high‑school students, and she attributed differences to frequency of interaction and staff availability rather than personality: when an officer is seen regularly, students develop rapport. "If I see somebody every single day, I'm gonna, you know, hey, good morning," she said.
Council members indicated support for more granular reporting and for the proposed training and coverage adjustments; no formal vote was taken during the presentation.
