There is no emergency at Boulder Elementary School, and no obvious threats of one. Still, Superintendent Jeff Elliott wants students to be comfortable and prepared should they ever need the help of law enforcement.
That’s why Elliott has made it a priority to form connections between Boulder Elementary and local law enforcement since he joined the school in the fall of 2021.
Elliott has considered hiring a dedicated school resource officer — a professional specifically equipped and trained for school-based law enforcement and crisis response who works in schools using community-oriented policing concepts.
The Lewistown public schools, where Elliott previously worked, employs dedicated resource officers who interact with students of all ages. If a safety issue arises in a school, especially with an older student, officers are there to respond and solve the problem.
Elliot believes having resource officers can help students become comfortable with law enforcement officers, making it easier for them to seek help in case of problems. But Boulder Elementary’s smaller size and limited funding currently preclude this approach. “A district and school this size can’t quite support this,” he said.
Jefferson County Superintendent of Schools Sarah Eyer explained that besides the challenge of funding, the intricacies of small towns can make divvying up of resources difficult. While Elliott has researched alternative paths to fund the officers, such as grants, he worries that when that money runs out, the school will be “back to square one.”
Instead, Elliott has put in place simpler, lower-cost ways to build the school’s relationship with local law enforcement, such as inviting the sheriff’s department to visit with students. “We have had officers come eat lunch with the kids or spend time on the playground,” he said. “It helps the kids see [officers] as just another person, and not a scary figure who only is there when someone gets in trouble.”
Elliott’s experiment is playing out in the context of a broader county-wide effort to build similar bridges. In 2019, the Montana Legislature passed MCA 52-2-211 requiring all counties to attempt to form interdisciplinary teams to advance child information and school safety. The teams are aimed at creating a flow of information to all involved parties, so that they can make informed decisions about safety, explained Eyer.
Jefferson County Commissioner Cory Kirsch told the Monitor that he sent a notice to local departments in July, 2019, informing them of the opportunity to be involved in the group. At the time, he didn’t receive enough responses to form the team. (There is no penalty for counties that are unable to form a team, as long as it is documented that notices of the opportunity were given.)
This July, Kirsch sent out another notice to the County Attorney, Superintendent of Schools, and Sheriff; the state Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Corrections; and the Board of Trustees of all public schools. Those departments are specified in MCA 52-2-211.
Eyer, said she has spent time explaining the purpose of the team to the different parties, and hopes that they will see success this time. A team would not come up with mandates or policies, she said, but rather would help participating members do what is best for each individual school. “it will all lead back to how to keep students safe and provide resources for the school,” she said
Kirsch added, “I think people are seeing the changing environment and realizing that things like we see on the news can happen here too,” Kirsch explained, adding that he hopes the line of communication formed by an interdisciplinary team can prevent issues before they happen.
Jefferson County Sheriff Craig Doolitte said that the department does its best to have a presence in all the county’s schools, but the breadth of the department’s duties makes it impossible to have a dedicated officer for each school.
In light of this, the sheriff’s department has found other ways to be involved in the schools. Partnerships such as that at Boulder Elementary, and running D.A.R.E programs in each of the schools, can be effective, Doolittle said.
“I think we have a really good connection with the schools in the county, and if an interdisciplinary team can expand on this, and get more communication it would be beneficial,” he said about the prospect of an interdisciplinary team for the county.
