HANCOCK — The Hancock School Board met in special session Friday to discuss the question of approving armed school resource officers in district buildings and on district properties. The board approved the motion, Superintendent Steve Patchin said.

Patchin said the board’s decision starts the process of the district looking into it. SROs are nothing new, he said, adding that other schools have them.

In fact, downstate Oxford Township’s high school has a police officer assigned to patrol its halls and campus. In November, that deputy and a responding deputy disarmed and arrested a 15-year-old student who is accused of killing three fellow students and wounding eight others, including a teacher.

SROs are sworn law enforcement officers responsible for safety and crime prevention in schools. A local police department, sheriff’s agency, or school system typically employs SROs who work closely with school administrators in an effort to create a safer environment, according to the U.S. Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services website.

The responsibilities of SROs are similar to regular police officers in that they have the ability to make arrests, respond to calls for service and document incidents that occur within their jurisdiction. Beyond law enforcement, SROs also serve as educators, emergency managers and informal counselors, officials said.

SROs in the United States started in 1958 in downstate Flint as a way to improve relationships between police and teens, according to the Police Foundation.

From the 1970s through the mid-1990s, the task was largely anti-drug and anti-gang education. Then, in the late 1990s, as school shootings began to climb, more schools added officers as part of security measures.

Some school systems, like the Detroit Public Schools Community District, have reduced the number of armed officers in its buildings, while others, such as the local Hancock Public School District, have added their first resource officers, according to Michigan State University’s Sparta News Room.

Patchin said the board’s approval Friday helps the Hancock School District start to develop what an SRO position will look like for the Hancock district.

“Obviously, you have to look at what are their rules inside the schools,” Patchin explained. “It came out with the public that they were pretty clear on that they don’t want somebody who’s just standing next to the door, but they want somebody who’s interacting with the kids and talking to them.”

Patchin said the district is expanding what Hancock Public Schools is already doing with the Hancock City Police, as an officer has a part-time presence in the schools now. Now the role will become a full-time position, with an officer present at all times.

Patchin said the school district has been developing the program since last year. With school security, he said, there are several different layers and there is no one-size-fits-all program. Part of the development of increased security has already been implemented in the school system, he said.

“So we’ve hired a social worker at the elementary school,” he said. “The social worker is now developing a program for screening the students to see if they’re struggling. And if they’re struggling then we do early interventions to help the kids out.

“We’ll do the same thing up here (at the high school and middle school building) as we develop it. That’s the social/emotional piece.”

Last year, the school began the Remote Police Office in the middle school, said Patchin.

The schools have regularly had police walk through all of the buildings so students get used to their presence.

“And we’ve got the security on the outside; you have to tap in, we’ve got security cameras everywhere — all these things are layers and this is our next progression for our police security layer,” Patchin said.