CT school resource officer law not applied as intended, report finds

Despite a state statue meant to increase transparency about the role of school resource officers, a newly released report from Connecticut Voices for Children shows that updates to the law don’t have to be followed by many school districts, leading to the legislation not being carried out as intended.

In 2015, lawmakers passed legislation that standardized what police presence in school buildings would look like — requiring local boards of education, in partnership with law enforcement, to produce a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, that outlined an SRO’s role, responsibilities and training requirements.

The law was updated in 2021 with a provision requiring SRO training in social-emotional learning and restorative action, and underwent further changes again in 2023.

That year, the passage of Public Act 23-167required school boards to post their MOUs, which would specify the school officer’s duties and procedures for serious intervention, including restraint, firearms and school-based arrests, on their websites. It also aimed to increase transparency of how SROs interact with students through more detailed data collection.

But implementation of the updated statues “depends on when an MOU is created and/or updated,” said Emily Byrne, the executive director of CT Voices for Children, which released its report on Wednesday.

Researchers at CT Voices for Children estimated, through the use of federal, state and local data, that 97 districts across the state employ SROs.

Of those 97 districts, they were only able to obtain 49 MOU documents, and less than half of those were accessible online.

In further analysis of the 49 available MOUs they obtained, most districts (37) required specific training to the SRO position, but that included anything from annual school safety training to social-emotional and restorative practice training.

Only nine districts mandated at least one SRO-specific training before interacting with students, the report said.

CT Voices’ analysis also found issues with the clear outline of responsibilities for SROs, including that “in Connecticut, almost three quarters of MOUs include duties for SROs that go beyond law enforcement.”

“Only a quarter of MOUs require SROs to have training specifically related to children and adolescents, despite most districts requiring the SROs serve in roles closely with children and adolescents, such as to be mentors and educators,” said Emily Knox, the organization’s research and policy director. “SROs are law enforcement officers, so they should not be engaging in mundane school discipline.”

Knox added that most MOUs did not integrate most of the legislative changes from 2023, including a lack of specific outlines for “duties and procedures related to restraint firearms and other weapons, or reporting student investigations to supervisors.”

Knox also raised concerns about transparency measures for communication between school resource officers, building staff and families.

“Ninety-two percent of the MOUs we reviewed did not include language to help students, parents, teachers and other staff understand the process for communicating concerns or grievances regarding specific SROs or the overarching SRO program,” Knox said. “Only 12% of MOUs include language about when an SRO must report their interactions with students to a student’s parent or guardian.”

The report recommended three key things to focus on as the legislative session is set to begin in January.

The recommendations included an update of MOUs on a regular basis, better community involvement with hiring and evaluating SRO programs with easier accessibility to MOU reports through the state education department’s website and explicit provisions for SRO training.

“Clear, transparent, memorandums of understanding between school districts and police departments are really important and beneficial for SROs, school personnel, students and the school community overall,” Byrne said. “They certainly aren’t the only thing we can do to mitigate the school to prison pipeline but they’re a good start.”

In 2021-22, the last reported year of school-based arrests on the state education department’s website, over 960 students were arrested.

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