The school resource officer assigned to Evergreen High School was not at the campus Wednesday when a student opened fire, leaving parents and students to question whether the school was left more vulnerable to an attack.
Mark Techmeyer, director of public affairs for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, said the school resource officer assigned to Evergreen High School Wednesday was called away from the campus to respond to a nearby car crash that morning.
The regular school resource officer has been out on medical leave for about 10 months, Techmeyer said, and the school has had rotating substitute officers since then.
Techmeyer said it is normal for SROs to leave their posts for lunch and doctor’s appointments, as with any job, or to be dispatched to nearby incidents, as the SRO at Evergreen was on Wednesday.
Techmeyer said deputies arrived at the school about two minutes after the first 911 call about the shooting and encountered the shooter about five minutes after the 911 call. He strongly doubts the SRO’s absence had an impact on the deputies’ response time to the school or on the shooter’s plans.
“I am confident (the shooter) did not coordinate his attack with the movement of the SRO,” Techmeyer said. “A kid like that is focused on his plan, he is not taking into consideration the movements of the SRO.”
SROs are trained to run toward gunfire on campus, a shift spurred by the failures of the law enforcement response to the Columbine school shooting 26 years ago, Techmeyer said.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s office is contracted to provide SROs at 12 of the 60 schools in the unincorporated county area, Techmeyer said, including Evergreen High School. Jeffco public schools that are located in municipalities, like Arvada, have SROs from local police departments, he said.
There are no statewide policies governing school resource officers, said Christine Harms, the director of the Colorado Office of School Safety. Sheriff’s offices have their own agreements with school districts governing those policies, Harms said. The sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to a request for its agreement.
Law Enforcement guard a vigil for the shooting at Evergreen High School, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025, at Buchanan Fields in Evergreen, Colorado. (Jeremy Sparig, Special to The Colorado Sun)The lack of an SRO on campus when the shooter opened fire alarms parents and students, some of whom raised concerns about school safety at Evergreen High School long before Wednesday.
Madison Mihalik, a senior at Evergreen High School, nearly a year ago wrote an email to Jeffco Public Schools Superintendent Tracy Dorland expressing frustration over the district providing students and staff few details about a security threat last fall. In a Sept. 20, 2024, email, Madison wrote that a threat was made toward the school two days earlier but no one updated students about what happened and classes carried on.
The next day, a bullet was discovered in the school while students and staff were present.
“We were not properly informed on the severity of the issues in our building, and our teachers were denied transparency,” Madison wrote to Dorland. “I have a right to feel safe in school, which you have taken away from me.”
Madison said her email went unanswered.
“Do we not deserve to go to school feeling safe?”
Late Wednesday afternoon, Madison followed up with searing words for Dorland as well as Jeff Pierson, who oversees school safety for the district, along with all five Jeffco school board members — criticizing their silence a year ago in another email.
“No child should have to go to school wondering if they will live and get to go back home,” Madison wrote to them. “Today, I saw people huddled into a corner crying because they thought they would die. Today, I had to run out of my school because I was scared I would be shot. Today, I had to sit behind a door, not knowing if a cop or a shooter was banging on it. Today, I had to tell my family I loved them because I thought it could be my last chance.”
She added that Evergreen High School “rarely” has an SRO on its campus.
“Do we not deserve safety?” Madison wrote. “Do we not deserve to go to school feeling safe?”
Board member Erin Kenworthy responded late Wednesday night, writing that she shares in Madison’s anger and cares “deeply” about students and school staff.
“Every single school in the county has security plans and mechanisms in place,” Kenworthy wrote. “No matter how many layers of prevention and preparation we supply, still, the unthinkable happens.”
Kenworthy apologized for administrators and board members’ failure to respond to Madison’s original email. She wrote that she knows that “questions were asked” about the incident.
In a separate email, Kenworthy explained how SROs work in the district, with individual SROs designated for “an articulation area” in which they might bounce between a middle school and elementary schools on any given day.
Law enforcement gather and investigate a shooting at Evergreen High School, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, in Evergreen, Colorado. (Jeremy Sparig, Special to The Colorado Sun)Madison told The Colorado Sun that her sense of safety as a student at Evergreen High School has continued to shrink over the past three years. She said she remembers having an SRO in school regularly during her freshman year, but that changed her sophomore year and now she only ever sees an SRO for scheduled drills.
She said that students no longer have a reason to feel safe in school.
“Nothing has been done and it’s disgusting,” Madison wrote in her email to The Sun. “We cannot be expected to set foot back into that building until (something) is done.”
School safety has also remained a top concern among some parents and guardians of Evergreen High School students. During a meeting of the Parents, Teachers/Staff and Students Association at the school Tuesday, the day before the shooting, one parent asked, “What happens if we have a shooter?”
The district must spread limited resources among many schools. Mountain schools, like Evergreen High School, have been deprioritized because they are in areas with less crime, Principal Skyler Artes told parents at the meeting, according to meeting minutes.
Cindy Mazeika, PTA president at Evergreen High School, said she wants “equal treatment” with safety resources across schools and at least one designated SRO assigned to every school in the district.
“This is a terrible situation, and I feel like the outcome could’ve been different if we had an SRO,” Mazeika said. “I don’t know if it would, but that’s the purpose of having an SRO on site assigned while school is in session.”
An SRO might not be able to prevent an emergency like a shooting, Mazeika said, but “they are there to react. They are there to protect and have a much faster response.”
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