Two Evergreen High School parent groups raised concerns about the availability of school resource officers in the hours before Wednesday’s shooting that critically wounded two high school students, parents said Friday.
At a Tuesday night meeting of the Evergreen High School Parent Teacher Student Association, a parent questioned why Evergreen High didn’t have a new school resource officer to replace its previous officer, who had been away on medical leave for nearly a year. The school’s principal explained that Jeffco Public Schools had “deprioritized” SROs for its mountain schools, which would share officers between them, said Cindy Mazeika, the PTSA’s president.
One parent asked explicitly what would happen if there were a shooting at the school.
“We as parents didn’t know about this until somebody asked about it on the open floor at the end of the PTA meeting on Tuesday night,” Mazieka said.
Jacki Kelley, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, told reporters Thursday that a school resource officer was not at the school when 16-year-old Desmond Holly started firing his gun, critically wounding two students before he fatally shot himself. Deputies arrived on the scene minutes after the shooting began, Kelley said.
The school’s full-time deputy was on medical leave, Kelley said, and the gap has been filled by several part-time officers. The deputy assigned to the school that morning was dispatched to a nearby accident, which Kelley said was routine and did not violate departmental policy.
In an email Friday, spokespeople for the school district did not directly respond to questions about the parent groups’ concerns. The district wrote that an SRO was assigned to the high school, but it directed other questions to the sheriff’s office, including how assignment decisions are made.
Spokespeople for the sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Friday afternoon.
In the district’s contract with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the agency agreed to provide school resource officers to a dozen county schools, including Evergreen High, “as staffing allows.” The district has contracts with various cities to provide SROs at its other schools.
The parents’ concerns come as the district adjusts to directly paying for the officers. In April, the district learned that it would have to begin paying for 50% of the cost for the officers during the 2025-2026 school year, according to an April budget presentation. That meant an additional $2.2 million in district funding, which was provided in the budget.
In its statement, the district said its SRO program “is a point of pride for our district, and we remain committed to sustaining it.” In survey data presented to the Jeffco school board in June, a majority of families, staff and students reported feeling safe at the district’s schools.
On Wednesday morning, shortly before the shooting began at the high school, Evergreen Middle School parents also raised concerns about SRO staffing, said Sarah Aller, the head of that school’s PTA. In lieu of an SRO, staff at the middle school purchased new walkie-talkies for school personnel to communicate, Aller said. The PTA used $12,000 of its own funds to cover the purchase.
Madison Mihalik, a senior at Evergreen High, said she emailed the district’s superintendent in September 2024 after at least one empty shell casing was found in a school stairwell. In her 2024 email, which she provided to The Post, she wrote that the school had been targeted by a threat the day before the bullet was found and that she felt unsafe
The district and the sheriff’s office did not respond to questions about the bullet incident, which both Mazieka and Aller also recalled.
Mihalik said the school typically had an SRO present during her freshman year, but that changed during her sophomore year. In a new email she sent to district officials hours after the shooting, she said she and her classmates “rarely have a resource officer at our school.”
“Do we not deserve to go to school feeling safe?” she wrote.
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