When Denver Public Schools high school students return from spring break, many will be greeted Monday by an armed police officer – a show of force after two administrators were shot at East High School last week.

But not every high school.

Only East and 10 other “comprehensive high schools” will have a school resource officer (SRO), which is a peace officer who works in a school setting.

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A comprehensive high school is one that addresses the needs of all students as opposed to a vocational or university prep school.

The Denver Police Department has committed to providing two SROs at East High School and one at the following high school campuses: North, South, West, Montbello, Dr. Martin Luther King, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy and Manual.

Other schools could be added later, a district spokesperson said.

An officer in each police district will continue working as a liaison for middle and high schools’ leadership teams to assist with safety concerns, Michael Strott, Mayor Michael Hancock’s spokesperson, said in an email to The Denver Gazette.

“While assigning 13 officers to work as School Resource Officers does pull officers away from typical patrol duties, the Department is constantly adjusting the deployment of resources based on data, trends and needs, and adjusting to having SROs in schools is no different,” Strott said. 

The cost – which has not yet been calculated – will be absorbed by the city.

“The funding needs to come from the city,” Board Vice President Auon’tai M. Anderson said Monday during a press conference explaining the district’s move to return cops to schools.

Anderson was among those behind the push to remove SROs in 2020.

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“DPS doesn’t have the budget to provide two cops per every high school,” he said Monday.

DPS is operating with a roughly $9 million budget shortfall this year.

Amid national police brutality protests in 2020, DPS cut ties with the Denver Police Department, ending a five-year contract signed in 2017. SROs were phased out of DPS schools over two semesters starting with middle schools, Anderson said.

As it was with other large urban school districts across the country, the move was prompted by the over policing of black and brown students after the George Floyd murder at the hands of police.

In the 2018-2019 school year, for example, police reported 744 incidents on DPS campuses, 67% of which were Hispanic and Black students, according to state data. White students comprised 25% of the incidents.

Two years later, the number of incidents had plummeted to 24.

That number, though, comes with a caveat.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, students were largely absent from campus. 

Denver Public Schools to bring police officers back to schools in light of East High shooting