When a 16-year-old student began shooting and kept reloading his gun at Evergreen High School around noon on Wednesday, the police officer assigned to the campus was not on duty.

That full-time school resource officer (SRO) was on medical leave. Meanwhile, a deputy who assumed those policing duties on a part-time basis was working on a traffic crash nearby, the police said.

The suspect critically injured two students before killing himself, authorities said.

Those details frustrated leaders of the school’s Parent Teacher Student Association, who claimed the mountain town schools have been disregarded by the school district and by the police.

Evergreen High School has a full-time SRO — a trained Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office deputy there to assist with safety — but she was currently on medical leave during the shooting, according to Jacki Kelley, a spokesperson with the sheriff’s office.

While the officer is on leave, the school hired part-time SROs.

But there wasn’t anyone on campus at those crucial minutes on Wednesday. One deputy had left around 10:30 a.m. for a nearby crash.

The part-time SRO is allowed to come and go when needed elsewhere, Kelley said.

The shooting started about two hours later.

“Horrible timing, of course,” Kelley said of the full-time deputy’s medical leave.

Kelley said nearby schools have a shared SRO, and a full-time position may be established in nearby schools in the future.

The sheriff’s office required the municipalities to pay 50% of the SROs’ salaries last year, according to Jeffco Public School’s April FY 2025-26 budget development update.

In the new budget, the district is expected to pay more than $2.2 million to replace municipal funding for 50% of its 38 SROs and three sergeants on staff.

There are 145 schools in the district.

Dr. Skyler Artes, the Evergreen High School principal, told parents that “mountain schools have been deprioritized, and resources are shared.” She said the school “was deprioritized because we are a small mountain town with less crime than the schools down the hill with SROs.”

Her remarks were parts of the minutes published on the parent-teacher organization’s website.

“A mom sitting next to me said directly to Dr. Artes, ‘Why does Evergreen High School not have an SRO?'” Evergreen High School PTSA President Cindy Mazeika said, 9News reported. “Then another parent asked, ‘What if there’s a shooting?'”

SROs did not become a widespread idea until the 1990s. 

The practice has faced its share of scrutiny — and support. 

Notably, the Denver Public Schools board voted to get rid of SROs in 2020, citing fears of “over-policing.” Under public pressure following the school shooting at East High School that left two administrators wounded in March 2023, the school board reversed its decision and returned SROs to schools. 

At the state Capitol, one perennial topic of debate is funding to beef up security measures, along with the all-too familiar arguments over the role of police officers in ensuring the safety of students and school staff.

Colorado School Safety Resource Center Director Chris Harms told The Denver Gazette that no one tracks the number of school resource officers. The estimate is around 200 to 300 to cover 1,900 buildings.

The state doesn’t fund SROs; their salaries are split between local law enforcement agencies and the school districts.

“Public Safety does the training under a grant that’s running out. The situation in Evergreen is pretty typical; SROs rotate among the schools,” Harms said. “Jeffco is better prepared for this kind of thing than anywhere in the country.”

But SROs can only do so much, according to Jeff Pierson, executive director of safety and security for Jefferson County Public Schools.

“We can provide as much of a secure perimeter as we want. We cannot allow visitors in. We can put secure vestibules and lock doors,” Pierson told The Denver Gazette in 2024. “But what we’ve found is a lot of the tragedies are being done by former students or students, which tells us that we’ve got to pay attention to the internal pieces of mental health awareness.”

Colorado Politics reporter Marianne Goodland contributed to this report.