Penns Valley Area students get to know new police force as school year gets underway

As students get back into the daily routine of classes, homework and after-school sports at Penns Valley Area buildings, they are also getting to know new members of their school community — the school police officers. Although students may have run into the officers last spring, this will be the first full year of Penns Valley’s new police force.

The Penns Valley Area school board approved plans to establish a school police force in January, becoming the last school district in Centre County to implement some form of officers in district buildings. After months of paperwork and interviews, the three officers started in April. The unit includes former state troopers Kent Bernier and Chuck Hockenberry, and supervisor Nicole Eckley, a former juvenile detective with the State College Police Department.

Some students were apprehensive of the officers during their short installment in the spring, Eckley said, but it’s been different so far this fall.

“I think they’re just used to us, but they’re very engaged, very interactive with us and it’s been a very positive experience since the beginning of the year,” Eckley said.

Unlike school resource officers who are members of a municipal police department and contracted out to schools, school police officers are district employees. Officers help liaise with other law enforcement and state agencies, patrol district buildings and assist in any criminal matters. School police officers are not involved in regular disciplinary proceedings and are only involved in incidents where the law has been broken.

Establishing essentially a brand-new police department inside the district requires a lot of time, money, (the district estimated a $250,000 cost in January for the officers,) equipment and, unfortunately for Eckley, paperwork. But most of the officers’ day to day work so far has been focusing on embedding themselves in the school community and getting to know the students.

“Protection and safety is obviously the forefront of the reason they have us in the school,” Eckley said. “But it’s so much deeper than that. We’re not just sitting here waiting for something bad to happen. We’re very proactive, we’re hanging out with the kids, we are doing presentations.”

The officers currently rotate through all four district buildings but plan to enact a more permanent schedule once a fourth officer has been hired.

Critics of officers in schools often point to statistics that show students of color are disproportionately arrested and more likely to be referred to law enforcement than their peers. This is part of a larger school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon, where practices like increased school policing push underrepresented students out of the classroom and into the juvenile justice system.

Eckley said the work the officers at Penns Valley do helps students understand the legal system and the officers act as a liaison between students and the state police if a crime has been committed. Although the district’s force is independent, they do call on state police for more serious crimes. The district’s previous reliance on the state police is part of the appeal of an internal department in such a rural area; in previous years, administrators would have to wait anywhere from 20-60 minutes for an officer to arrive.

As school shooting incidents continue to rise across the nation, Superintendent Brian Griffith said it’s time for the district to have officers on hand. He said he’s been grateful for the process and the community’s input in getting the department started.

“They’ve been a valuable resource and building relationships and connecting with kids,” Griffith said. “And I’m hopeful that we never have to use them in any official capacity.”

Despite only being in place for two months last spring and now since the first day of class on Aug. 29, Griffith hopes that having officers on hand, alongside a new cellphone policy which requires all students to keep phones in their lockers for the majority of the day, will help curb negative behavioral issues among students.

“I am hopeful that this year as we look throughout the entire year I’m hopeful that we’re going to see a decline in our reportable offenses,” Griffith said. “And that is a good thing because that allows our administrators to focus on what matters, which is having our students receive great education.”

Vince Smith, a senior at Penns Valley High School, said he’s been a supporter of introducing officers into the district from the start.

“I hear about school shootings that happen on the news and obviously, I think like hey, it could never happen to me, not Penns Valley,” Smith said. “But then again, that’s probably what the other school said ... it makes me feel more comfortable seeing them, knowing that they are there.”

Although up and running, the department is not yet complete with the district continuing to search for a fourth officer. Finding a current or retired police officer with the right temperament can be difficult but it’s worth waiting for the right person, Eckley said.

“It does take a very unique person to do this job,” Eckley said. “Policing in a school is very different than policing just out in the general population of your jurisdiction. Your school is definitely like a microcosm of your community.”

This story was originally published September 12, 2023 at 10:42 AM.