Officer Luke LaVanway has spent the past several seasons coaching wrestlers at St. Mary Catholic Central High School. Now he is stepping into a new role at the same building, becoming the first dedicated School Resource Officer to serve both St. Mary Catholic Central (SMCC) and Monroe Catholic Elementary Schools (MCES), a designation that marks a formal expansion of police presence into Monroe's parochial school system.
The announcement came in a post from the Monroe Public Safety Department, which congratulated LaVanway on the new assignment. According to the department, School Resource Officers serve as mentors, resources, and trusted partners within the school community, and they play an important role in school safety and security while building positive relationships with students and staff.
LaVanway brings an unusual head start into the job. He is entering his fourth season with the SMCC wrestling program, where he serves as assistant varsity wrestling coach, and that tenure has already given him an established relationship with students, athletes, coaches, and staff at the school, per the department's announcement. In his own words, shared in the same post, LaVanway said he is grateful and blessed for the opportunity to connect and build relationships with MCES and SMCC students and staff, adding that he looks forward to being a resource and mentor.
A Wider Footprint Across Monroe Catholic Schools
The new partnership is not limited to the high school. It also covers Monroe Catholic Elementary Schools, which include the St. Mary campus and the St. Michael campus, as well as designated off-campus school events for both the elementary and high school communities. The Monroe Public Safety Department has said it plans to expand its partnership with MCES and SMCC going forward, and that the department works alongside Monroe's schools to provide safety, security, and support more broadly.
The elementary network LaVanway will now serve has deep roots in the city. Monroe Catholic Elementary Schools was established in 2012 as a consolidation of three historic parish schools — St. Mary, founded in 1846, St. John the Baptist, founded in 1917, and St. Michael the Archangel, dedicated in 1919 — according to Monroe Catholic Elementary Schools. St. Mary Catholic Central High School itself traces back to a 1986 merger of St. Mary Academy, a girls' boarding and day school founded in 1846 by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and Monroe Catholic Central, a boys' school founded in 1944 by the Brothers of Holy Cross, per St. Mary Catholic Central High School.
A Department Built for Cross-Trained Roles
The assignment fits into a department structure designed for exactly this kind of flexible, cross-functional duty. The Monroe Public Safety Department operates as a consolidated police and fire service agency established in 2010, with its dual-trained public safety officers formally taking duty on August 24, 2011, according to the City of Monroe. The department has been led since October 2021 by Director Chad J. Tolstedt, who joined the police division in 1999 and spent two decades on the Monroe County Sheriff's Office Special Response Team before taking the top job, according to the city.
The city's fiscal year 2026–2027 budget explicitly allocates resources for dedicated School Resource Officer roles, including split-duty assignments covering both public and parochial school systems, per the City of Monroe's budget documentation. That funding line helps explain how a formal, full-time placement like LaVanway's became possible after years of more limited collaboration between the department and SMCC, which had previously partnered with the school's SROs in March 2022 to deliver ALICE crisis-response training to faculty and staff, according to a Facebook post from the time.
Beyond LaVanway, a Broader Support System
LaVanway's placement also plugs into wellness tools the department has built out for its school-based officers in recent years. In August 2023, the Monroe Public Safety Department introduced a K9 therapy program, acquiring Buddy, a goldendoodle donated by Michigan Doodle Rescue Connect, to help SROs provide emotional support to students across Monroe schools, the city announced at the time.
Before joining the department, LaVanway competed as a 197-pound collegiate wrestler for Waynesburg University in Pennsylvania and graduated from Mason High School in Michigan, according to Waynesburg University Athletics. That athletic background dovetails with his coaching role at SMCC, where he is now beginning his fourth season on the wrestling staff even as he takes on the new policing assignment.
Part of a Statewide and National Pattern
Michigan law ties state grant-supported School Resource Officer positions to training standards set by the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards, meaning officers placed through such funding must meet state-mandated professional requirements, according to the Michigan Legislature. The broader concept of placing officers in schools has roots in Michigan itself: the School Resource Officer model originated in Flint during the 1950s, when Flint Public Schools and the local police department launched the nation's first Police School Liaison program, according to the RAND Corporation. Decades later, Monroe's own version of that model is now extending, for the first time on a dedicated basis, into the city's Catholic school system.
