La Crosse superintendent says reduce school officers, and get them out of buildings

The La Crosse school board still hasn’t taken a final vote on whether to remove police officers from local school buildings, but there’s continued pressure from the public to end the 27-year-old school resource officer program as soon as possible. 

Superintendent Aaron Engel tells the board that he still wants officers trained to work with students to serve the district, but not patrolling buildings every day.

“The way that (the program) has functioned up to this point will be no longer,” says He says the officers “will only be responding to incidents” that are not safe.

School board member Jeffrey Meyer says the district’s main goal for now should be to get through the pandemic, and bring students back to school sometime soon. 

Engel says having fewer of those officers in schools is “the right answer,” but he argues that assaults, fights, and threats involving students could still lead school officials to call police for help.