School Board Rallies for SRO

By Dylan Marsh
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
NEWPORT — Discussions spanning school board and select board meetings have resulted in an agreement between the Police Department and SAU 43 regarding a school resource officer (SRO) being available at the high school.

Newport Police Officer Paul Beaudet began his tenure last week, training with the staff of the school and spent the day at the school for orientation on August 29, 2022. Newport School District Superintendent Donna Magoon has said that a revised contract has reached her as of August 29,and at first glance, appears to be suitable for all parties involved.

At a school board meeting on August 11, Magoon approached the board with a memorandum of understanding from Town Manager Hunter Rieseberg which included stipulations for obtaining an SRO. Included in those stipulations were that the school district pay time and a half for the officer on duty, as well as seventy five percent of cost of benefits for the officer. Due to staffing shortages within the police department, the town would be required to backfill costs of employment. Should the town offer a school resource officer to the school, it would have potentially left the department short staffed ,and require the town to pay officers overtime to have around the clock service.

Magoon stated that conversations with former Newport Police Chief Brent Wilmot led her to believe that the school would receive an SRO without any issue, shortly before he departed to accept a job as Chief in Claremont. Frustrated with the town expecting the school to incur the steep costs of hiring an officer at time and a half, school board member Tim Beard suggested that the school board go to the upcoming selectboard meeting to air their grievances. He specifically cited “political BS”, and claimed that he believed Town Manager Hunter Riesberg was “playing games.” In the past, the school has split the cost of an SRO with the police department in a 49/51 split, so that should the police department need to call the SRO away, they were paying the larger amount.

Members of the school board including Burt Spaulding, Tim Beard, and Jenna Darling attended the following selectboard meeting along with Magoon. According to Selectboard Chairman Jeffrey Kessler, the decision to pull the SRO came from the police chief and town manager due to three officers having left for a number of reasons. The shortage of officers was only temporary, as the officers would be returning, hopefully sometime early in the upcoming year. He also suggested that former Chief Wilmot had made a promise without any way to staff the position.

Kessler also mentioned the importance of having an SRO given the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. At school board meetings, both the shootings in Uvalde and Parkland, Florida were given as examples for reasons that the school needed an SRO. Kessler pointed out that the selectboard doesn’t negotiate employment issues, and that it is the reason the town has a Town Manager. Lastly, he spoke to issues members of the school board raised with the Town Manager at the previous school board meeting, defending him and projects he has completed for the town, and also raised issues he felt as though he had with the Superintendent.

“Chief Hunter will tell you that we do not have adequate staffing and we have to backfill the staff that we do have at time and a half just to maintain the staffing we have which will be made worse if we send an SRO,” said Rieseberg to members of both the selectboard and school board.

There was a period of unrest between the selectboard itself, as this hadn’t been made an agenda item for the meeting, and some members of the board had been caught off guard, not only by the matter at hand, but Kessler’s approach to the forum.

“I’m a little dismayed that you’ve had a lot of time to prepare for this. I haven’t, we just received this 45 minutes ago. While I do know the issues going on, I was not informed about the proposal, in fact I think you’re the only one that was. So don’t speak for me,” selectboard member Barry Connell said to Kessler.

Selectboard member, and former Newport Police Chief, Jim Burroughs cited NH RSA 105 2.a in which a police chief is given autonomy as to where they send their staff. Burroughs stated that this RSA leaves the issue of an SRO solely in the hands of Interim Police Chief Barry Hunter. Rieseberg informed the selectboard that this wasn’t necessarily true, however, as the RSA doesn’t contemplate the issue of an officer entering into a contract with the town and that the decision is between the chief, town manager, and superintendent.

Spaulding asked the selectboard to make a motion in which they would voice their commitment of having an SRO on the first day of school. Burroughs made a motion for the commitment but it received a tie 2-2 vote. The idea of potentially short staffing the police department drew particular concern from selectboard member Keith Sayer, who seemingly questioned Magoon as to what the police department should be expected to do regarding scheduling.

“Do we just leave the town uncovered from 2 AM to 6 AM? Would we be fine having the police officers on call than actually on duty? When I went to school there was no such thing as an SRO, you stepped out of line, somebody slapped you around and put you back in line. What happened?” Sayer asked.

While she mentioned that she believed Sayer’s words were tongue in cheek, former school board member and Newport resident Virignia “Biddy” Irwin reminded Sayer, “that we no longer beat children in schools.”

The selectboard ultimately did vote on the concept of supporting the idea of having an SRO at the school, however, this is not binding in any capacity, nor did it determine who would pay for the cost of the SRO.

On August 25, the school board voted unanimously to approve a draft of the MOU between the town and the school district to have an SRO on duty at the school. While the MOU that was voted on isn’t the final installment of the contract, Beard did mention that he wasn’t a fan of the wording in the section regarding arrests of students or staff. In the MOU, it is suggested that, given appropriate situations, students and staff would not be arrested in front of their peers but rather arrested quietly at a later time. Beard suggested that, specifically students, should they be arrested, be paraded down the hallways in handcuffs and placed in a cruiser in front of the school as a form of consequence. Spaulding objected to this and felt like it was ill advised to showcase students being arrested. Magoon reminded them of the language in the document which leaves these decisions up to the SRO in regards to the safety of staff and students.

“The tentative superintendent fought tooth and nail to get an SRO. She went to bat for us and got it done. It probably could be the most significant thing we do, that is to have an SRO,” said Spaulding of hiring an SRO.

Having an SRO at schools has been a hot button issue in the past few years, as many believe that having a police officer in a school creates a potentially hostile environment for some students. A 2018 study done by Clemson University reported that having an SRO inadvertently increased the likelihood of student contact with the juvenile justice system, and promoted the school to prison pipeline. The issue many organizations find is that a large percentage of students arrested have historically been students with emotional behavioral disorders.

Aside from being an SRO at Newport Middle High School, Magoon has discussed having Officer Beaudet teach classes at the Middle School, similar to the D.A.R.E program. Dates for this program have not yet been released.