CLEARFIELD – The Clearfield school board will give consideration to a school resource officer agreement with Lawrence Township.
At Monday night’s committee meetings, Superintendent Terry Struble said the agreement is in draft form, and he hopes that it will be ready for board consideration next week.
According to him, Chief Douglas Clark of the Lawrence Township police has assigned an officer to serve as the district’s SRO at the Clearfield Area Junior-Senior High and Clearfield Area Elementary schools.
Struble said when this officer is scheduled to work dayshift and doesn’t have police matters to handle, he’s been instructed to visit the schools and familiarize himself with the layout of both campuses.
The proposed agreement wasn’t released to the press at the committee meetings. Struble said it could be made available once it has been approved by the board.
In other business, the board was presented with the Harmony Area School District’s amended request for withdrawal as a sending school of the Clearfield County Career & Technology Center.
District officials previously requested for Harmony’s withdrawal to be effective at the end of this school year and to be granted a 10-year payment plan for their financial buy-out obligation.
That request was denied by the other sending districts, including Clearfield. Since then, Harmony officials have amended their request to be effective at the end of the 2017-18 school year pending satisfactory completion of all financial obligations.
According to previously-published GANT News reports, Harmony’s withdrawal must be approved by the five sending districts – Clearfield, Curwensville, Moshannon Valley, West Branch and Philipsburg-Osceola.
When asked in a previous meeting about the amount of Harmony’s financial obligation, Struble explained that it was tied to a CCCTC bond issue and the district (Harmony) had hired counsel to calculate its share with interest growth over time.
Student-wise, Harmony sends about 10-15 students to the CCCTC annually. The withdrawal’s impact on the general operating budget isn’t as much of a concern because it can be absorbed, according to Struble.
“It’s just about how we take care of the long-term obligation,” Struble said during previous board discussion. “We want to make sure we protect the five remaining schools and the CCCTC.”
Harmony’s school district officials are currently seeking a closer alternative for career and technical education for their students.
At a previous board meeting, Struble said Harmony students have about an hour bus ride to the CCCTC and then back. Some have to travel into Harmony to get the bus.
“Some of those kids have two hours tied up on a bus before they even step inside a school,” he said. “They are looking at Admiral Perry (Area Vocational Technical School). It’s about 36 minutes from the school.
“… We get the whole process educationally and what they are looking at doing. We just have to protect everyone else on the financial end of it.”
