SURPRISE, AZ — More police officers are walking on Valley school campuses now, more than there were a month ago after the Arizona Department of Education’s initiative to place off-duty officers in schools.
In October, Superintendent Tom Horne announced a new initiative to partner with a company called Off Duty Management to help put police officers in schools on their off days. This comes after finding out some schools could not get resource officers due to staffing shortages in police departments.
The officers placed in schools on their off days are called school safety officers. They’re different than school resource officers since resource officers have more training inside schools and stay in one school full-time. Safety officers move around to different schools based on their availability and have to learn each school’s operations and schedules.
For Surprise Police Officer Gerrit Groenewold, every day is different, even more so now as he’s taken on a side gig being inside schools as a safety officer.
“For me, it's really easy because I'm passionate about kids. I'm passionate about the youth. I was a former educator before I became a police officer,” he told ABC15.
Safety officers are at the school anywhere between eight to 10 hours a day. On Tuesday at Freedom Traditional Academy, Groenewold told ABC15 he generally monitors the halls, checks on basic security needs like making sure fences are locked or closed and just being in the area to help assist any teachers, administrators or parents.
Groenewold said his favorite part, though, is enjoying recess with the kids and cultivating relationships with them.
“You have to do some things and you have to see some things as a police officer. Just a kid high-fiving you or a kid inviting you to his birthday party, it really helps you out,” Groenewold said.
Before the school safety officer program, Freedom Traditional Academy, a kindergarten through eighth-grade school, did not have an officer on campus. The Dysart Unified School District said it needed to prioritize high schools and middle schools with school resource officers when they were available. With the new program, off-duty officers were assigned to the school.
“It’s so nice to have an officer on campus that’s immediately available to be able to answer those little questions we may have. It’s just that added security, level of security on campus that really helps out,” said principal Connie Wolford.
Jason Yeager, the director of safety operations for Dysart Unified, said just last year, they were able to add school resource officers to the middle schools. The district’s 24 school sites now have officers 95% of the time because of the school safety officer program, he said.
“Being that the SSO is an off-duty capacity and that it's on their days off, it doesn’t affect any other city operations so it worked out nicely to have that combo,” Yeager said.
The Arizona Department of Education said more than 50 schools have opted into the new SSO program since it was announced.