DANVILLE — School Resource Officer Rich Miller doesn’t have empirical data to back up his work at Danville Elementary School — but he sees the impact made when he walks through the halls Monday through Friday.
Miller became Danville’s School Resource Officer (SRO) in 2021, right after joining the Danville Police Department. Born and raised in the Blue Devil school district, Miller was a 1986 graduate of Danville High School.
He has led a curriculum crafted by the state’s Dept. of Public Safety and Dept. of Public Education, which is mandatory for grades nine through 12, and has been drafted and revised several times based on community inputs to update the safety program.
At the elementary level, Miller leads the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program — which has been known traditionally to help kids say “no” to using drugs and alcohol, but has seen modern revamps in recent years under the title “Keeping It Real.”
Miller teaches elementary students about online safety, managing electronic devices such as tablets, phones and computers, where such devices can be used to amplify a message that some may regret.
“We still talk about drugs and alcohol, health issues things that cause bad health effects,” Miller said. “It’s kind of geared more toward the pressures that these kids face now.
“When I was a kid, we didn’t have anything like that. It was like ‘just don’t do drugs’ — now we talk about being safe, being responsible, being respectful in all aspects,” he said.
Miller points back to his childhood, where if there was a problem you’d speak to one another.
“Now you just fire up a text or a tweet that can reach 50, 60 or 70 people in seconds. Now everybody’s privy to the issue,” he said. “It makes grievances much more expeditious.”
Topics range between each grade level, Miller said. For example, with first graders Miller focuses on safety protocols like how to dial 911, kitchen appliances that may cause harm and how to safely cross the street.
“With fifth grade, we’ve talked more about how to manage your grievances and how to be inclusive of everybody, not to be a keyboard warrior and how to work those grievances out in real time,” he said.
In total, Miller does eight sessions for first grade, going through each first grade classroom. Fifth grade is broken into a 10-week program during the fall and finishes right before Christmas break, Miller said.
A DARE graduation is held, where fifth graders meet in the gymnasium and awards are given out to students who go above and beyond.
Miller points to one of the upper-shelved cabinets in his office where his DARE supplies reside. He pulls out a laminated pamphlet that has an upset child drawn on it.
“We talk about if you’re angry, once you’re in first grade, you don’t really understand the concept of emotion — you’re just mad,” Miller said. “You teach them to stop, just stop and think about it for a minute. Count to five and breathe.”
Though Miller doesn’t have quantitative metrics for the DARE program’s success, he sees students having a better understanding of safety and how to interact with peace officers.
“For some of those kids, other than me being here, they have probably have never had any interaction with police officers,” Miller said.
“But I mean an interaction where it’s a car stop or some sort of investigative stop…so we talk about that in the class and we talk about what that interaction looks like.”
Miller also doesn’t see any limitations with the program, saying the provided material is “pretty spot on.”
One thing Miller likes about the program is how interactive and transformative learning can be, combining print with pictures.
“I think it helps them to understand the larger concept of what that interaction would or could look like. And at the end of the day, knowledge is power,” Miller said. “If you understand what’s happening in a situation or have a some concept of what’s happening, then you are more likely to react better.
“If you’re just caught blindsided on something, they take a defensive posture cause they don’t understand. But if you have an understanding about it, then you’re not so quick to become defensive.”
