Washington CSD, city, consider placing officer at schools

WASHINGTON — Local education officials say they’re considering hiring a school resource officer as soon as the 2026-27 school year, as the Washington School district applies for federal funding assistance.

Washington Superintendent Willie Stone said the move would cost the schools roughly $73,000 a year, with the city picking up the price of equipment and the rest of an officer’s salary, with a total annual sum of about $120,000.

The push was led by school board Member Brendan DeLong, who is also Washington’s fire chief. He said it was motivated partially by an incident near the end of the most recent school year, when two unloaded handguns were found on school property.

“It’s that, and me just knowing that the police are at the middle school quite a bit for behavioral issues and vapes, and things they find that are not supposed to be on school property,” he said after the board’s June 11 meeting.

Washington Police Chief Jim Lester, at a city council meeting the following week, said an officer could help deter issues like DeLong mentioned, and said the officer would likely be involved in some classroom activities as well, teaching kids about social media safety, or dangers of illicit drug use.

He said an SRO could also help train school staff, and coordinate emergency response planning.

“I’d love to be able to get into the schools more often,” he said. “Having an officer there, I think, would allow for a lot of that … and to be available to handle a lot of the vape calls, the fights, the requests for assistance and things like that, that we handle when there is a real issue out at the schools. I think the presence of that officer there would be beneficial to the students overall.”

Lester said the officer would take on routine municipal police duties over summer break while school’s not in session, relieving the workload for other police officers during the city department’s busy season, with school not in session.

School board members appeared largely on board with the plan at last month’s meeting, and none spoke against an update from Stone at another meeting July 2, where the superintendent said the district planned to pursue grant funds for the 2026-27 school year.

The application deadline passed late last month for 2025-26 funding under the federal Community Oriented Policing Services program, a nationwide source of grants for school resource officers, law enforcement training programs and police equipment.

Stone said an SRO would be especially efficient as the district consolidates its high school and middle school into one campus, reducing the number of properties an officer would have to travel between. But he expressed some concern last month about the payroll cost, after Washington schools declined to raise 21 staff members’ salaries for the coming school year due to budget constraints.

“I think it’s important to bring this up … we’re going to have $73,000 in costs to our district, at the same time that we didn’t give any raises to 21 staff members,” he said. “We did actually have people leave the district because of that.”

Otherwise, district officials seem to be largely on board with the proposal to put a police officer in Washington’s school buildings.

“I feel like, 15 years ago, when you talk about police officers being in a school, it’s kind of like, ‘Whoa,’” said school board Member Kara Williams at last month’s meeting. “I think nowadays, it’s almost being proactive to have someone there. It stinks to get to that place … but being proactive tells our community that safety is a big deal for us, for our kids, we don’t want to wait until something happens.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com