Wenatchee School Resource Officers Provide Update

Wenatchee School District's two School Resource Officers (SRO) provided an update for the school board Tuesday night, not only detailing the events of last school year but also providing insight into their efforts during the COVID closure and summer break.

SRO Jared Shepard said that during the summer break they checked on the welfare of various students, hung out with students during lunch handouts, delivered supplies, and attended online training.

"Obviously we kind of anticipated there being some issues with kids on ZOOM and doing their training online with distance learning." explained Shepard, "We have some fairly new cyber bullying laws, so we helped create part of a PowerPoint ... so that students were pretty informed on what the law was and what they could and could not get away with."

During the last school year, SROs responded to a total of 203 calls for service within the district, including 11 assaults, 12 cases of harassment or threats, 7 drug offenses, 3 sex offenses, and a burglary.

Wenatchee's SROs also outlined some potential future activities. They include:

• Outreach to new students, foster students, and transfers
• An online Q&A between students and SROs
• Giving SROs the opportunity to assist in PE class
• Creating educational safety videos for elementary-aged students
• Read a book videos for elementary-aged students
• Lunch time bike helmet handouts
• Continued work with high school and middle school counselors