Mainer shares success of Down East program

MACHIAS – Cpl. Donald Smith of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department flew to Washington Tuesday to describe his job to participants in the National Safe Schools Conference.

Smith is the school resource officer for Down East Safe Schools – one of 54 projects across the country that are funded under a multi-million dollar federal initiative to reduce violence in the nation’s schools.

The Washington County program operates in five school districts and is the only Maine project to receive the federal funds.

Monica Kelly, the program director of Down East Safe Schools, said the federal grant is just under $1 million a year for three years. The program entered its second year on Oct. 1 and the grant funds pay for Smith’s position, clinical social workers and prevention coordinators in each of the school districts, and special curriculums that teach nonviolent conflict resolution and decision-making, she said.

Smith spends his day in schools from Jonesboro to Indian Township, mediating disputes, counseling students and giving classes on everything from bike safety to how to deal with bullying.

“The more I do it, the more I see a need for it,” Smith said during an interview earlier this week. “But I’m stretched pretty thin.”

Smith works in 21 schools, seeing approximately 2,700 students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

He said conference organizers asked him to make a presentation because he has the largest coverage area of any school resource officer in the country.

“My area is bigger than the state of Rhode Island,” Smith said.

The project just entered its second year and Smith said he can see a difference in student attitude.

“When I first went in to the schools, students thought someone had done something wrong,” he said. “Now, they’re glad to see me.”

Smith said students, particularly younger children, appear to take him seriously when he tells them to call him about any problem they want to discuss.

Last year, a child had him paged about what he told the dispatcher was “an emergency.”

“His cat was up in a tree and wouldn’t come down,” Smith said. “Well, I did tell them to call, no matter how small the problem.”

But there are some very serious problems in Washington County schools, including drug abuse, Smith said.

According to a small informal survey he conducted last year, 50 percent of seventh- and eighth-graders and 83 percent of juniors and seniors will admit to trying drugs at least once, Smith said.

Another serious problem is bullying, he said. Smith said when he asks teachers what they think is the most serious problem, they invariably mention bullying.

“It pretty much starts in kindergarten,” he said. “And, as we were told in school resource officer training, 95 percent of the student shootings across the country began with bullying.”

And, in a recent incident, a student brought a toy gun to school and pretended to shoot at another student, he said.

“He’d painted it to look like a real gun,” Smith said.

That was extremely troubling, he said, but most of the incidents he deals with aren’t that serious. Smith said he intervenes in situations like someone pulling a fire alarm that would normally be the work of a patrol officer if there were no school resource officer.

Smith said he is looking forward to talking with other school resource officers during the conference, including some of those he met during his initial training.

A school resource officer who was called into Columbine High School after those shootings was one of the training instructors, he said.

Down East Safe Schools is a joint project of the Washington County Consortium for School Improvement, the Washington County Sheriff’s Department and the Regional Medical Center at Lubec.

Kelly said the program contracts with locl social service and mental health service providers to assure that children and families in the participating school districts receive the services they need immediately. Participating school districts are Union 102, Union 106, SAD 19, SAD 77 and Maine Indian Education.