School security: Penns Valley holding vote on officers, State College hosting SRO forum

Two Centre County school districts are revisiting and discussing school security after months of feedback from community members and parents.

Penns Valley Area School District’s board of directors will vote Wednesday on several motions relating to starting a school police force.

Penns Valley is the only district in Centre County without school security officers. The decision to consider adding officers comes after several months of community town halls, board meetings and a community-wide survey. That survey drew wide support from the community, with 85% of the survey responses supporting hiring school security staff.

Starting a school police force means PVSD would employ its own officers, rather than work with a local municipality to have resource officers in the schools. Although the district does not have a final cost estimate, other districts’ salaries range from $36,000 to $117,000 per officer per year.

Later this month, the State College Area School District will hold a forum so the board of directors and administration can “hear community sentiment regarding school resource officers,” Interim Superintendent Curtis Johnson wrote in an email to families.

The community forum on the role of school resource officers will be held Jan. 26, followed by a panel discussion on Feb. 13. Attendees can RSVP for the events online.

The Jan. 26 forum, held from 6-8 p.m. in the State High cafeteria, will feature small group discussions with facilitators where participants will share perspectives. The Feb. 13 event, from 6-7:30 p.m. in the high school small auditorium, will be a follow up to the Jan. 26 event and feature a panel that includes SCASD administrators and the high school SRO. Feedback from January event will be discussed and Elizabeth Siegelman, the program coordinator for Community Conferencing of Centre County, will serve as the panel moderator.

“We look forward to hearing your thoughts and drawing on them to help us all better understand the role of SROs in our district,” Johnson wrote.

SCASD discussed the role of SROs in September, after public comments and questions about the role of officers in schools. Some parents at an Aug. 30 Culture Climate and Learning Committee meeting wanted additional officers stationed at elementary schools, while some requested more data and research around SROs. Researchers have found that Black students feel less safe around police officers and are disproportionately likely to have negative interactions with police in schools.

Through memorandums of understanding with State College Borough and Patton Township, SCASD employs one part-time school and two full-time school resource officers who work at State High, the Delta Program and the two middle schools.