School Resource Officers are trained to work with school officials to perceive and analyze problems with children before they become a serious problem for society. The department, in cooperation with the Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District, assigns one officer to the Middleton High School, and one officer to Kromrey Middle School on a full-time basis. The purposes of this program are prevention, referral and education.

Middleton High School
Officer Travis Kakuske
(608)829-9665 | tkakuske@ci.middleton.wi.us

During the month of December, there were 51 police calls for service at the Middleton High School (MHS). This number was down from past months, primarily due to the fact that students were on winter break from December 22 through the end of the month. Some of the above incidents included seven assist citizen calls, six check person calls, two disturbances, eight reports of lost property, six thefts, and six 911 disconnects. The high number of 911 disconnects is the result of a cell phone tower being located on school property. From the noted calls, there were five municipal tickets issued at MHS in December, including possession of drug paraphernalia and truancy (4). In addition to municipal tickets, last month I also referred five charges to the Dane County District Attorney’s Office, including four charges of theft and one charge of possession of a controlled substance (marijuana).

I was involved in many other activities in December, including facilitating several tabletop exercise training sessions with school staff from MHS, MASH, and Elm Lawn Elementary School. The purpose of a tabletop exercise is to verbally process and talk through a critical incident scenario step by step with key individuals who would be most likely involved if the incident actually happened. The goal of the exercise is twofold: to mentally prepare for critical incidents, and to possibly expose weaknesses with regard to the response. In December, select staff from each school in the district participated in multiple tabletop exercises.

Last month I gave presentations to several classes at MHS as well, including two talks on self-defense topics to a gym class. I also gave several presentations to sophomore health classes on the topic of drugs and alcohol, including the trends we are seeing in the community, consequences if caught using, etc. In addition, I also participated in this year’s “Reality Day” for marketing students, which was a half-day event that was held off school grounds.

Finally, last month I also attended several Dean meetings with school administration, as well as an expulsion hearing at the District Administration Center.

 

Kromrey Middle School
Officer Matt Sherry
(608) 829-9547 | msherry@ci.middleton.wi.us

December is a short month, due to Christmas break. December was filled with busy days, trying to finish up the G.R.E.A.T. program for the year. I also participated in two tabletop discussions and had a third disrupted by an incident at Kromrey.

As I said above, I finished teaching G.R.E.A.T. to the 6 th graders. The end of G.R.E.A.T. means project presentations for the group. There were many good presentations and I could tell the students put a lot of thought and effort into it. Projects ranged from students making posters to hang up in school, to donating homemade blankets to the Dane County Humane Society and pillowcase dresses for a Haiti earthquake relief. I would like to thank the 6 th grade teachers who gratiously let me come into their classrooms and teach. They were also very flexible with schedule changes and I greatly appreciate it.

I also helped facilitate two tabletop exercises on school safety in December. These exercises were the first steps taken by the Middleton Cross Plains Area School District to address school safety scenarios. Participants in the scenarios were Situation Response Team members from each school and each school had their own day for the exercise. All of the teams did an excellent job.

I took five calls for service in December. There were two sexual conduct cases. One involved an autistic child and the other an inappropriate picture on a cell phone. Neither resulted in charges and were handled by counseling the students on their behavior. There were two disturbances. One disturbance resulted in verbal warnings to the students and the other resulted in a disorderly conduct charge. Kromrey also experienced it’s first bomb threat since I have been here. Suspects were interviewed, but none have been arrested on any charges as of this report.