COEUR d'ALENE - The team of police officers assigned to Coeur d'Alene public schools will soon expand from six to eight, and for the first time, it will include a sheriff's deputy.

School resource officers, or SROs, are specially trained, uniformed, armed police officers assigned to the schools.

The SRO program has been in place in Coeur d'Alene since 1995, and until now, has been provided solely through a partnership between the school district and the Coeur d'Alene Police Department.

The district recently entered into an agreement with the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office, through the city of Hayden, that will provide a sheriff's deputy to serve as SRO for the district's four schools that are outside Coeur d'Alene's city limits: Atlas, Hayden Meadows and Dalton elementary schools and the Hayden Kinder Center.

"The county/Hayden deal is huge, as the sheriff's department has never participated in SRO programs anywhere in the county," Coeur d'Alene School District Chief Operating Officer Wendell Wardell said.

Under the agreement with the city of Hayden, the school district is paying $51,000 for a patrol vehicle for the Hayden SRO. The district will also split the cost of the deputy's salary with the city, which is the same arrangement the school district has with Coeur d'Alene.

The school district has also reached an agreement with the city of Coeur d'Alene to add an additional SRO to cover the elementary schools that are within city limits: Ramsey, Skyway, Sorensen, Bryan, Winton, Fernan and Borah.

The two new SROs will be in place by the start of school next year. It will be the first time officers are assigned to elementary schools in the district. The existing six SROs are assigned to the district's middle and high schools.

Under their union contract with the city, the SROs, who are considered detectives, have been working four shifts of 10 hours and 40 minutes each week. That has left each of the schools without SRO coverage for one day each week. Although the school officers on duty are instructed to cover for off-duty SROs, often traveling to schools they are not assigned to, the situation has been less than ideal for the school district's administrators who want officers in the schools each day.

The district recently reached an agreement with the city in which the school district is paying an annual stipend of $28,000, a shift differential that covers all six SROs. Beginning this week, the officers are all working five eight-hour shifts.

Coeur d'Alene Police Sgt. Christie Wood, who heads up the SRO program for the department, said the officers are assigned an investigative caseload and are expected to investigate crimes in the community as well as perform their SRO duties. The officers are often asked to work in the evenings during dances and football games, she said, and are still on-call for community crimes that might occur on the weekends.

Because the hours are less attractive than those available to all other police department employees, Wood said it's not always easy to recruit new SROs. The shift differential provides a small financial incentive, she said.

"It is imperative to me to get very seasoned, mature officers filling those positions," Wood said.

She currently has SROs who are SWAT leaders - one is a sniper and the other a weapons expert. There is an SRO who is a bomb-recognition expert and two who are certified child forensic interviewers, a skill that Wood said is very useful when dealing with a sexual assault case with a child victim. All the SROs are Police Officer Standards and Training certified instructors, she said.

"My current team are all the best of the best, and I never want them to ask to go back to patrol because of the burnout due to hours worked (in the schools)," Wood said.

Mike Lindquist, the new principal of Venture, the district's alternative high school, said that in his opinion, the SROs are "invaluable."

Lindquist moved to Venture this year, after serving as assistant principal at Canfield Middle School, where he also worked closely with the school officers.

There are multiple benefits to having an SRO on campus, beyond being present in the event of a crisis, Lindquist said.

In the middle schools, the officers teach in the classrooms, often providing drug and alcohol awareness.

"They help with their presence during the passing periods, and before and after school," Lindquist said. "It's also a positive for the kids to get to know them and have a relationship with them. A lot of kids have family members and know people in the community who don't always have a high opinion of police. The kids learn they're not the enemy."