The Montana Racial Equity Project and American Civil Liberties Union of Montana announced in an open letter to Helena City Manager Rachel Harlow-Schalk that they are withdrawing from future meetings of the city's recently formed school resource officer working group unless certain changes are made.Â
The Helena City Commission in July directed city staff to "engage in the development of a new (memorandum of understanding) to be completed by June 30th, 2021 with Helena Public Schools" regarding the 21-year school resource officer program that uses city funding.Â
"Our experience at the initial Working Group meeting is that there is no interest in such a robust discussion and that the decision to keep the existing model of SROs in schools has already been made," the ACLU of Montana's Tuesday letter states.