That the City Council approve and authorize the City Manager to execute an agreement between the City of La Habra (City) and the La Habra City School District (District) to participate in the School Resource Officer (SRO) program at Washington Middle School and Imperial Middle School for School Year 2021-2022.

The District contracts annually with the City for participation in the SRO Program at its middle school, with Imperial Middle School and Washington Middle School currently sharing one SRO. The SRO program was implemented in 1992, beginning with a gang violence suppression grant awarded to the City through the Office of Criminal Justice Planning.  SROs at middle school campuses have been a highly successful and effective method of creating a safe school environment for students, faculty and administrative staff.

SROs are involved in a variety of activities that promote public safety on and around school campuses, such as working with educators to resolve campus incidents, providing supervision at afternoon activities, visiting classrooms, and ensuring that unauthorized persons are kept off school grounds.  During the 2018-2019 School Year, the last full school year with on campus education prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the SRO assigned to both middle schools handled more than 400 calls for service, wrote more than 150 police reports, and arrested/cited nearly 65 people on a variety of charges.  Police statistics do not capture the additional amount of time officers devoted to counseling and mentoring students, nor do they measure the value of having a police officer on campus with respect to crime prevention, public relations, and the effect of a safe learning environment for students.

The District has agreed to pay the City of La Habra a sum not to exceed $156,241 to cover salary and benefit costs for one police officer position assigned to District schools. The salary and benefits for one police officer position will be pro-rated to $156,241 to exclude 12 weeks of summer vacation when campuses are closed.