NORTHFIELD — A year has passed since a school resource officer last walked the halls of Pioneer Valley Regional School. But following a vote from the Curriculum and Personnel Subcommittee in favor of reviving the position, that might change this fall.

According to Pioneer School Committee Chair Reina Dastous, the full committee must approve the subcommittee’s recommendation for the Northfield Police Department to start the hiring process. The School Committee will vote on whether to move forward with filling the SRO position, as well as consider a draft of the agreement between the school district and Northfield, during its July 20 meeting.

“I don’t expect it to be a big challenge,” Dastous said regarding the School Committee voting the position forward.

Should the new agreement be approved, Northfield Police Chief Jon Hall said an officer within his department will fill the role. He mentioned the department had hired Officer Chad Sumner last fall with the expectation that he would serve as the district’s SRO. After working at the Greenfield Police Department for 17 years, Sumner completed the necessary SRO training on assisting juveniles with mental health issues and crises, including a 40-hour course run by the National Association of School Resource Officers.

Hall emphasized that the hiring would not be a promotion but a “lateral transfer process,” with the SRO remaining a Northfield police officer in addition to being an SRO during the school year. However, Hall noted that community stakeholders, including teachers, principals, the School Committee and Pioneer Superintendent Patricia Kinsella, will still need to interview and select a candidate.

“We’re ready to begin whenever the school wants and when they give me a timeline,” Hall said.

According to Kinsella, the district dedicated $30,000 toward funding the SRO in its fiscal year 2024 budget.

A need for community policing

Dastous said the specifics of the position will be decided after the School Committee votes, including whether the position should be part-time or full-time and if the SRO will split their time across the entire district or serve a particular school. However, Hall noted that the previous agreement, which expired June 30, stated that the SRO spent mornings at the elementary schools and the rest of the time at the high school.

Previous agreements emphasize that the SRO is not a disciplinarian. Instead, the SRO’s job is to foster relationships with students to catch when “something is off” and prevent tragedies, Hall said.

Before Billy Kimball, who left the position at the end of the 2021-2022 school year, Northfield Selectboard member Heath Cummings had served as SRO. Cummings said his role involved educating students on the dangers of cyberbullying, distracted driving, vaping and substance abuse. According to Hall, the next SRO will ideally run similar “proactive” programs.

Selectboard member Barbara “Bee” Jacque said the SRO position represents “community policing,” one of the Selectboard’s goals.

“It takes a community to support kids in adolescence,” Jacque said. She noted the SRO can help prevent problems from reaching crisis points by listening to students “on the sidelines,” such as those who overhear threats on the school bus.

Jacque said she was “thrilled” by the Curriculum and Personnel Subcommittee’s decision to bring a vote on the position to the full School Committee. Likewise, Cummings said he was “really pleased” by the decision.

Delayed process

At a recent Selectboard meeting, members had voiced frustration over the SRO’s year-long vacancy.

“When I took that position, they weren’t sure they needed it. … When I left, I wanted them to feel like they couldn’t live without it, and I feel like I did that,” said Cummings, noting that the role “humanizes the badge” and makes kids feel “less intimidated” by police. “What the hell happened between 2018 and now?”

With the future of the position feeling uncertain, the chosen candidate to fill Kimball’s position, Michael Williams, withdrew his interest in the job in March 2022. Dastous said Williams’ withdrawal set the return of an SRO back because the officer “wasn’t a position that we felt comfortable jumping in the middle of the year with.” Referring to the 2022-2023 school year, Dastous said, “That left us without a candidate until after the start of the school year.”

But once classes started, Dastous said the Curriculum and Personnel Subcommittee was busy tackling several other issues, including the district’s budget, a teachers’ contract and Warwick’s withdrawal from the district.

“It needed to go through the Curriculum and Personnel Subcommittee first, and they’ve been pretty busy with other items that were more pressing,” she said. “This was the time that it made its way up the chain in terms of the items that we could get to.”

She said the subcommittee voted to restart the SRO hiring process after reading the draft agreement and the incident reports detailing police response to district schools over the past six months, when there hasn’t been an SRO. Dastous said the reports from Hall were “eye-opening” and revealed the importance of having someone who would be dedicated to addressing those reported issues.

“It was something that we had planned for in the budget,” Dastous said, referring to the SRO position. “We’re glad to be moving forward with this and we will continue to look for updates on how things are working with the schools, but I’m hopeful that it will have a positive impact.”

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