The Safe and Successful Kids Interlocal (SSKI) Board that includes members from both the Lincoln Board of Education and the City of Lincoln, held their regular meeting on Thursday, Nov. 5, in the Boardroom at the Lincoln Public Schools Steve Joel District Leadership Center located at 5905 O Street. You can watch the full SSKI meeting video on YouTube.

Lincoln Public Schools and the City of Lincoln share the goal of promoting school safety, which is an essential element of a positive and safe school climate. Building that environment includes building positive relationships with students and families, providing proactive instruction for positive behaviors, offering a wide range of student supports, focusing on de-escalating conflicts and negative behaviors, engaging and assigning developmentally appropriate and fair processes and consequences and utilizing those consequences and supports to address the root causes of misbehavior.

This is the seventh year of gathering data based on the goals and expectations established by the 2018 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the SSK Interlocal Board. The MOU had six goals:

• Create a common understanding that school administrators and teachers are ultimately responsible for school discipline and culture, and school resource officers (SROs) should not be involved in the enforcement of school rules.

• Minimize student discipline issues so they do not become school-based referrals to the juvenile justice system.

• Promote effectiveness and accountability.

• Provide training as available to SROs and appropriate LPS staff on effective strategies to work with students that align with program goals.

• Employ best practices so that all students are treated impartially and without bias by SROs and LPS staff in alignment with applicable City and LPS equity policies.

• Utilize best practices for training and oversight with the goal of reducing disproportionality.

Through this work, clear guidelines have been established and joint training with administrators and SROs takes place every year. This ensures there is a clear understanding of when an incident is only a violation of school rules, or when it is a law violation and the SROs need to be involved.

The Full SRO Program Report includes 116 pages of data, analysis and recommendations. Key takeaways from the report include:

• The 16 SROs from 2025-2026 have received a total of 3,206 training hours since their assignments began. These sessions have included topics such as LPS administrator and SRO training, Policing the Teen Brain, mental health, Behavioral Health Threat Assessment (BETA), Youth BETA, juvenile procedures, unbiased policing, De-escalation Basic SRO, and Advanced SRO.

• In 2025-2026, SROs received eight commendations for a variety of events.

• There were three complaints against SROs in 2025-2026. One was classified as exonerated and two resulted in a warning.

• Calls for service occur when an individual believes that a crime has been committed and contacts police through any of the communication channels. Historically, teachers and/or staff initiated the highest percentage of calls. As part of training, the trend changed in 2023-2024 when administrators initiated the highest percentage, and that trend continued in 2025-2026. This is the desired outcome.

• A juvenile referral is when there is probable cause that a juvenile is responsible for a criminal act. In 2025-2026, the referral rate for all LPS schools decreased by more than half from the prior four-year average, and is the same referral rate as seen in the last two school years.

• Calls for service that resulted in a referral decreased 68% from the four-year average at LPS high schools.

• Despite a 44% increase in the calls for service at middle schools, the number that resulted in referral or a citation decreased 38% from the four-year average.

• In 2025-2026, four students were lodged at the Youth Services Center as a result of one call for service. This represents 2.6% of calls for service resulting in a referral, or .4% of all calls for service or .02% of the LPS student population.

• As part of the 2025-2026 district perception survey, 9,485 students responded to the question “Overall, my school is safer because the SRO is in our building,” with 92% indicating they agreed or strongly agreed. Trends over the last three years show that as the number of responses increased so did the level of positive perceptions of SROs.

• In-school suspension data in 2025-2026 is similar to rates from the 2024-2025 school year. The data continues to show evidence of disproportionality for students who identify as male, Black, Hispanic, two or more races, and those in the Special Education program, English Language program and Free/Reduced Meal program.

Staff made the following recommendations supported by feedback from stakeholders, the data collected and best practices:

• LPS and Lincoln Police Department (LPD) should continue to provide robust professional development with focus on emerging topics and based on the needs of the Lincoln community.

• In an effort to increase survey response rates, Lincoln Public Schools will seek out effective strategies to increase student participation.

• LPS and LPD will review the impact and outcomes of recent adjustments to the School Resource Officer Program and Threat Assessment Team. In 2026-2027, two extra officers were added to the SRO team to support schools when assigned SROs are absent.