The following was posted as submitted by Bucyrus City Schools Superintendent Kevin Kimmel. The following does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff of Crawford County Now.

The Bucyrus City School District Board of Education approved a Memorandum of Understanding with the City of Bucyrus and Bucyrus City Police Department to add a second School Resource Officer in the district. This proactive decision shows the Bucyrus community that the members of the board are resolved to provide the safest learning environment for students.

The Bucyrus City Council will be asked to approve the same Memorandum of Understanding that was approved by our board members. As your elected officials discuss and ponder the addition of a second SRO, it’s important that the Bucyrus community knows the depth of the program and the value it provides to the Bucyrus City School District students and staff.

First and foremost, the SRO program provides a dedicated law enforcement professional in our district’s buildings. Our recent “issues” have been well documented, and Officer Jo Stahl has been instrumental in helping us protect our students and staff, investigate the threats made against the district and bring those individuals responsible to justice. But, Officer Stahl provides much more than a law enforcement presence in our district.

She provides a vast array of programming for our students to help them learn to make smarter decisions in their everyday lives. She is the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) instructor at the Elementary School and helps to organize and run the annual Safety Town program held each summer in the community.

Officer Stahl also spends nearly 60% of her time in the district serving as a mentor to our students. I’m going to let Officer Stahl explain this part of her job as SRO because it has a special meaning.

“Mentoring involves an array of topics including legal questions, relationship issues, problems at home, bullying, confidence, life goals, or students just wanting someone to tell them good morning each day and ask them how their night was and actually care about their answer.”

“This is the part of the job that means the most to me. I came from rough beginnings and I know what the struggle is and how much it meant to me when someone made time for me as a child.”

She serves as the advisor of the Police Explorers, an after-school program for 14 to 18-year-old children who are uniformed and trained in police work by the Bucyrus City Police Department. This group of students assists the Bucyrus Police Department at parades and during the Bratwurst Festival and downtown car show.

Officer Stahl has developed age-appropriate safety measures and trained every student at every grade level in our district on safety response and what they should do if the worst possible scenario should occur in our buildings. She has also been intimately involved in all the safety lockdown drills in both the Elementary and Secondary Schools, which includes organizing the first-ever full scale active shooter drill at the Secondary School that involved all emergency services (Bucyrus Police Department, Crawford County Sheriff’s Office, Ohio State Highway Patrol, Bucyrus Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services) playing a role and responding to one live event.

Until I asked her, I didn’t realize how entrenched Office Stahl has become in all the different aspects of the educational process for our students. She also provides support for our staff in the areas of lockdowns, advocacy, safety briefings and debriefings, in-school infractions (which she admits is the worst part of her job when she has to arrest students) and individualized training. I’m not going to share details for each of the aforementioned areas because we do not want to compromise the safety and security of our students and staff.

I share all this information because we need you, the Bucyrus community, to show your support for the addition of a second School Resource Officer by attending the Bucyrus City Council meeting at 7:00 p.m. in the City Hall Council Chambers Tuesday, April 17. I will be in attendance, as the Superintendent and a dad with three children in the district, speaking to the council members on behalf of our students and staff.

I hope you will join me and show your support for the School Resource Officer program in the Bucyrus City School District.

Kevin Kimmel
Superintendent, Bucyrus City School District