District highlights elementary school safety officer program and partnership with Kennewick police

Scott Child, speaking to the Kennewick School District Board of Directors, outlined the elementary School Safety Officer Program's three-year rollout, staffing model and partnership with local law enforcement.

"Clearly, our mission is keeping our schools safe," Child told the board, describing the program's approach: hiring former state-certified police officers who no longer serve as sworn officers, providing advanced firearms and active-shooter training, and embedding officers to focus on prevention and relationship-building. "They are not current law enforcement. I want to make that clear to everybody that they are not police officers," he said, adding that the district calls Kennewick Police Department (KPD) for enforcement needs.

Child gave multiple operational examples: officers signing into dispatch for immediate law-enforcement coordination; school walkthroughs that include fire and police first responders; and incidents where officers contained a disorderly, armed adult and provided timely information that assisted arrest. In one case, officers placed extra personnel in a secondary school after intelligence indicated planned fights; the anticipated violence did not occur and staff reported a reversal in behavior that day.

The presentation stressed officers' duties beyond enforcement: playground checks, lunch rotations, mentoring and building rapport with students. Child described officers eating with students, supervising arrival and dismissal, and using radio connectivity to reduce response times "from minutes into seconds." The program now assigns a permanent school safety officer to each elementary school.

Board members asked about potential expansion to middle and high schools; staff said expansion is under consideration but depends on logistics and how school security layers (security guards, SRAs, SROs) would interact. Funding for future security enhancements would come from the recently passed security levy but any expansion would return to the board for direction.