This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters
Thirteen Denver high school campuses will have at least one police officer stationed on campus next week when students return from spring break, a police department spokesperson confirmed Friday.
That’s well short of the number spelled out in the Denver school board’s recent direction to put as many as two police officers at all high schools for the remainder of the school year. That directive was issued after a March 22 shooting at East High School in which a student shot and injured two deans.
The following day, the school board suspended its 2020 policy banning police known as school resource officers, or SROs, from Denver schools.
When classes resume Tuesday, two SROs will be at East High, the district’s largest school with 2,500 students. Another 12 high school campuses will have one officer each, adding up to a total of 14 SROs, according to the police department.
The campuses, in order of student enrollment, are:
- Evie Dennis Campus, which has five schools, including DSST: Green Valley Ranch high school, and which serves a total of nearly 2,000 students in the five schools
- Northfield High, 1,870 students
- South High, 1,840 students
- North High, 1,600 students
- Thomas Jefferson High, 1,320 students
- George Washington High, 1,265 students
- Montbello High, 1,100 students
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Early College, 1,050 students
- Abraham Lincoln High, 980 students
- John F. Kennedy High, 790 students
- West High, 640 students
- Manual High, 320 students
Eight of the 14 officers previously worked as SROs in Denver, though not all of them had that assignment in 2020 when the school board voted to remove police from schools, said Denver Police Department spokesman Doug Schepman. The SROs were phased out of Denver schools over a year, with the last officers leaving their posts in June 2021.