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. 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.