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In September 2022, the Medford School District welcomed Josh Doney of the Medford Police Department as its school resource officer. He became popular with students, was widely respected by parents and faculty, and had started teaching an intro to law enforcement course at South Medford High School.

Late last month, the school district and police department announced that Doney had been removed from his SRO role and reassigned to patrol.

His abrupt exit has produced confusion and outrage — and many questions — and left the district scrambling to dispel rumors that Doney’s reassignment was disciplinary or retaliatory.

The apparently conflicting statements from officials haven’t helped clear things up.

The district and police department issued two joint statements within a week that sought to push back on claims that Doney had raised concerns about school safety — specifically, how the district dealt with students caught bringing guns to school — and that his input, or how he chose to deliver it, was not well-received.

Both statements portrayed his transfer as routine, as something that happens all the time in Medford PD. The second statement went further: “Officer Doney’s reassignment to Patrol was not disciplinary.”

Then, in an email to faculty and families, district Superintendent Bret Champion said Doney’s transfer was “due to an accumulation of concerns with regard to (district) SRO Standards and Expectations.”

Perhaps Doney’s reassignment wasn’t “disciplinary.” But whatever “concerns” had accumulated were significant enough that someone in charge felt the world would be a better place if Doney were doing something else.

Teachers, as well as Medford School Board member Michael Williams, told Rogue Valley Times reporter Buffy Pollock that Doney’s departure came after he clashed with the district’s director of security, Ron Havniear, over whether students caught bringing guns to school were readmitted to the district too soon.

State statute requires such students to be expelled for at least a year; Williams said Doney felt the district should have kept some out even longer and done a better job of monitoring the students during their expulsion. Hanviear told the Times that the district dealt with them appropriately and according to district guidelines.

Champion said the district shared Doney’s concerns about student expulsions and credited the erstwhile SRO with helping the district better track those students. Champion said Doney contributed to “stronger policies such as ‘more frequent check-ins’ and a checklist of requirements for students to reenter the district,” Pollock wrote.

None of this smells right.

But amid all the drama surrounding Doney — all the he-said/she-said about policies and guidelines and shortcomings and discrepancies — an alarming reality has started coming into focus.

Students and faculty worry about safety levels in the Medford School District, which has had at least four incidents in two years of students bringing firearms to school.

One particularly heartbreaking story involves a student who brought a loaded gun to South Medford High that his classmates found in his backpack.

The discovery happened in the classroom of now-former teacher Mike Calhoun, who told the Times he didn’t learn about it until the next day at a staff meeting. He said the district tried to downplay the incident and staff were told to keep mum about it. Calhoun resigned his teaching position, he said, because of safety issues and what he perceived as an inadequate response from the district.

Calhoun said he believes the student with the gun wasn’t planning a shooting but was himself afraid of bodily harm; the student had been “jumped by gang kids three weeks prior,” according to Calhoun.

“I pulled him out of a fight,” he said.

Not every student who feels threatened takes such extreme measures to protect themselves, but it’s worth asking how many students fear violence at district schools.

And how many teachers fear it?

Paul Cynar, who teaches criminal and constitutional law at South Medford High and who worked closely with Doney, told the Times that faculty have voiced safety concerns of their own that have gone unaddressed.

Officer Doney was a key part of this conversation, and, by many accounts, his absence will be felt.