The Wake County Board of Education has approved a new memorandum of understanding to sign with law enforcement agencies for staffing school resource officers at district schools.

The agreement will be used from July 1 through June 30, 2024.

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On Tuesday, the board also entered its first agreement for the upcoming school year, with the Raleigh Police Department for nine officers at nine Wake County Public School System high schools.

Both the new memorandum of understanding text and the Raleigh Police Department agreement were approved without opposition Tuesday.

Board Member Chris Heagarty said the new memorandum of understanding had been vetted for a year with stakeholder input, under a “very deliberative process.”

“It’s amazing to end up where we ended up,” he said. “No one can say we did not have voices from all parties.”

Much of the opposition to the district’s school resource officer program sought an end to the program entirely, rather than a modified agreement.

On Tuesday, as it has for months, the districts received several public comments from people calling for an end to the program and an increase instead in the funding of mental health or behavior intervention training.

“Put people in the schools who know how to interpret, de-escalate and respond to the behavior rather than criminalize it,” one commenter wrote.

Some of the comments urged removing school resource officers from elementary schools.

Much of the criticism of school resource officer programs is that they reflect racial bias in the criminal justice system and school discipline practices.

In recent years, the proportion of juvenile crimes tied to schools has dropped, although Black students are still disproportionately represented among those referrals.

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice issued a report last week on racial equity across North Carolina and each of its 115 traditional public school districts. The group found that 29.9% of the state’s juvenile delinquency referrals originated from school incidents last year, although schools were remote-only learning for part of the year. It was about 16.8% in Wake County. But in Wake County, Black students were 7.3 times more likely to receive a short-term suspension as white students, compared to 3.9 times as likely statewide.

The Wake County Board of Education voted to continue with an agreement earlier this year, rather than discontinuing the program.

The Wake County Public School System has at least one school-resource officer at every high school, but agreements expire at the end of this month. Any new agreements start July 1 and use new language than the prior agreement that more specifically spells out when school-resource officers should intervene in student conduct issues.

The latest agreement with the Raleigh Police Department is for $340,542 total ($37,838 for each officer).

The nine high schools are: Athens Drive, Broughton, Enloe, Millbrook, Leesville Road, Longview/Phillips, Sanderson, Southeast Raleigh and Wakefield.

The Wake County school district has 75 school resource officers, which are provided by 11 law enforcement agencies.

Every high school has one; 34 work in high schools. Another 37 work in middle schools and four work in elementary schools.

The program costs nearly $12.5 million annually, with most of that paid by the municipalities in which the schools are located. The municipalities contribute about $11.3 million, and the school district contributes $1.1 million, with most of that coming from state discretionary funds.

On Tuesday, Russ Smith, senior director of the district’s Office of Security, said officials from a handful of law enforcement agencies or cities have said they plan to sign another agreement with the district under the new memorandum of understanding.

Those agencies represent about 80% of the school resource officers in the district, he said.

Other than the Raleigh Police Department, they are the Wake County Sheriff’s Office and the towns of Apex, Cary and Knightdale, Smith said.

Attorneys for Wake Technical Community College, which supplies two school resource officers, are looking over the new memorandum of understanding but the police there currently favor it, Smith said.

Changes to the agreement

The memorandum of understanding approved Tuesday spells out five levels of student misconduct, followed by an explanation of which ones may necessitate school resource officer intervention.

Level 1 misconduct — such as inappropriate language, noncompliance, using cell phones when prohibited — shouldn’t require intervention. Level 2 misconduct — such as disruptive behavior, property damage, indecent exposure or threats — may intermittently require intervention, the draft states.

But the majority of law enforcement intervention would fall under the next three levels, which include drug possession, firearm possession or anything that would lead to permanent expulsion.

The memorandum of understanding asks law enforcement agencies to agree that the majority of student misconduct likely will not require school resource officer intervention and can be handled by other school officials.

“As discussed further below, the parties agree that law enforcement and SRO intervention should be limited to those incidents of student misconduct that present a threat to the school environment and are not more appropriately handled through referral to another resource (e.g., an administrator, school counselor, restorative justice-trained staff member),” the memorandum of understanding states.

Intervention that does take place should be “reasonable in scope and duration” based on the circumstances and should “protect the physical safety of members within the school community, while minimizing, to the extent possible, any unintended negative effects on students.” Intervention “must not be excessive, arbitrary, or malicious.”

The law enforcement agency’s procedures and protocols pertaining to use of force should be consistent with the specific revisions recommended by Governor Roy Cooper’s Task Force on Racial Equity in Law Enforcement, the memorandum of understanding states.

School resources should also regularly meet with school principals and participate in creating school safety plans.