Bar Harbor School Maintains Police Partnership Amid Broader Safety Discussions

Carrie Jones and  Shaun Farrar

Nov 04, 2025

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by The Witham Family Hotels Charitable Fund.

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BAR HARBOR—The school resource officer is officially returning for another year at the Conners Emerson School.

“It’s great to have a relationship with someone in law enforcement who knows the kids and knows the family,” School Superintendent Mike Zboray said in Bar Harbor on Monday.

During its November 3 meeting, the Bar Harbor School Board renewed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) that allows Bar Harbor Police Officer Elias Burne as its school resource officer.

The move came as the school administration is trying to find a good time to meet with the town’s public works director to engage in some discussion about crosswalks, sidewalks, sight lines, and other safety concerns on the students’ afterschool paths into downtown Bar Harbor areas.

The school resource officer agreement is renewed every year by each of the three island schools that Officer Burne heads to, Conners Emerson in Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Elementary, and Mount Desert Island High School.

“There was no changes that we asked to make for the MOU for Bar Harbor or the high school or Mount Desert,” Zboray said.

The agreement is reviewed yearly and a school resource officer has been serving Conners Emerson since 2010.

“Some years there’s more robust discussion about this than other years,” School Board Chair Marie Yarborough said.

She mentioned a robust discussion at the AOS board about it. The Mount Desert Elementary School Board received the memorandum of understanding for the school resource officer during its October 1 meeting and will act on it at its next meeting.

A Mount Desert Island native, military veteran, MDI High School football coach, Burne is employed by the Town of Bar Harbor.

Building relationships and trust with not only the students but also the staff is a primary goal for Burne, he said in an interview last year. He also sees himself as a role model and confidant if needed and says that one of his goals is to provide anyone in any of the schools with another human being to talk to if they have the need or desire. It doesn’t have to be negative or important, he wants to hear anything people have to say to him.

“Elias has hit the ground running and has spent a lot of time over these opening weeks building and strengthening relationships with the students at the high school. It’s common to see him engaged in games of frisbee or shooting baskets with students or just having a conversation about sports or weekend plans. He’s been doing a great job of getting to know our school and the people who make it such a great place to be,” Mount Desert Island High School Principal Matt Haney said in 2024.

The majority of the population the police department serves in the communities really don’t have interaction with the department until something bad happens, Police Chief David Kerns told those attending the meeting.

“A positive interaction with law enforcement and the school,” Chief Kerns said is the role and goal of the position.

The SRO position, according to Bar Harbor Finance Director Sarah Gilbert, is funded 100% by the Town of Bar Harbor via the Bar Harbor Police Department’s budget with no monetary contribution from school budgets or the Town of Mount Desert.

The first SRO, Tim Bland, and Chief Kerns were both hired as full-time officers for Bar Harbor Police Department in late September of 2000 and then attended the 96th Municipal County Basic Police School together in January of 2001. Both were hired by former chief Nathan Young. Chief Young had initiated and supported the school resource officer position during his tenure.

In 2016, Bland started spending between 2 to 2-1/2 days at the high school in addition to his time at Conners Emerson. Officer Elias Burne is now the SRO for both schools since Bland resigned in 2024.

The schools in Tremont and Southwest Harbor are not a part of the agreement and are covered by the Southwest Harbor Police Department. Discussion this year about potentially having a resource officer in those schools has been rambunctious.

According to the National Association of School Resource Officers, “A school resource officer (SRO) is a carefully selected, specifically trained, and properly equipped law enforcement officer with sworn authority, trained in school-based law enforcement and crisis response and assigned by an employing law enforcement agency to work collaboratively with one or more schools using community-oriented policing concepts.”

Zboray said the SRO is a real partner in school safety.

“The school is a community in its own,” Chief Kerns said, but it’s also part of the bigger community.

Officer Elias and the department try to honor the privacy and respect of all the families in the community, but it’s always about taking care of the kids, he said.

“Things that happen in the community effect students while they are at school; things that are at school in this community also bleed back out when the bell rings at the end of the day and they go home,” Chief Kerns said. “It’s not that we’re intruding onto the school and the school is not intruding onto us, but there’s an open dialogue. If something happened the night before and we know that it’s probably going to be affecting the student population or something, that’s relayed in a delicate manner.”

Vice Chair Misha Mytar said that the questions at the high school board level earlier this fall about the agreement made her look deeply into the memorandum of understanding.

“It is fair the questions people have about the risks or the downsides,” she said.

She asked how the school resource officer promotes safety.

The officer is never involved in any discipline that occurs in the school.

“It is not the SRO who handles that in any shape or form,” Chief Kerns said.

Conners Emerson Principal Dr. Heather Weir Webster said they talk about fire drills, the school crisis plan, and campus safety with visitors during construction with Officer Elias. He gives immediate feedback in keeping the school population safe.

Vice Principal Michael Fournier said that both Officer Bland and Officer Burnes have been hugely beneficial to staff and students.

“They’ve contributed to emotional safety, social safety,” Fournier said.

“They have nothing but positive stories and interactions when Tim was here,” Dr. Webster said of past students. Now, she said, “Elias provides the services that we need.”

He’s building relationships and he’s been a huge positive addition, she said.

“He will help us with morning duties outside, greeting students as they come in,” Dr. Webster said. He’ll check in with classrooms at the administrator’s direction. It’s been about building relationships this year. “Being seen and being in those areas where he will have an easier time to have those interactions.”

Over the years, the dividends that it’s paid with the school and administrators, Kerns said, has built a stronger bond between administrators and the police department.

“You have to find the right person,” Zboray said about the position. “It’s a really good thing that we think really carefully about who is going to be in this role.”

The school administrators were very involved in the selection process, he said, including coming in and doing oral boards in the middle of the summer.

“Tim left big shoes to fill, but Elias has done a great job,” Chief Kerns said.

Board member Mike Kiers asked about one section of the MOU that discusses reports and summaries.

Officer Elias would only be involved in an extreme circumstance, Chief Kerns said.

The social worker at the school is the first person they go to when there is a family situation. The SRO is more about relationships with the student, he and Dr. Webster explained. The police department also has a mental health liaison with a conditional social work certificate.

If the school social worker might have a good relationship with the student, but no links to the parent when there is a crisis, the SRO might have those links to the parent, Yarborough explained.

When there was a viable threat at the high school, Officer Bland had not been working that day. However, he came in and went to the reunification point outside the campus and facilitated students reuniting with parents and guardians.

Chief Kerns said that was “hugely valuable.”

It was an extreme example of the positions value, he said, but the years of work “paid dividends on that day.”