What:: One school resource officer

Cost: $117,166

How it works: The city contracts with the school district to put resource officers in five different schools. School resource officers help keep order, investigate crimes and enforce the law in and around schools while they communicate the importance and consequences of the legal system to students. The five officers are also work about 70 runaway cases per year, according to city documents.

Whom it affects: Students, teachers and administrators at Centennial and Central high schools and Edison, Franklin and Jefferson middle schools. The officers also help to preserve the quality of life in the schools' surrounding neighborhoods.

Why cut it?

The school resource officer is not enumerated as a potential cut in the current round of reductions the city has proposed, but officials have in recent months expressed preliminary interest in saving money by reducing the school force from five to four.

Champaign Police Chief R.T. Finney said the contractual obligations to the school district forced the department to reconsider making that cut in this round of reductions, but he said no program is immune to spending cuts as the city prepares its next budget.

City officials have said they would seek advice from the city council before they make such a move.

Removing one officer from the schools could save the department from cutting front-line police officers or investigators responsible for other types of crime in other areas of the city.

As cuts begin to take effect, the police department could be down to the staffing levels of 2005, before the city annexed several subdivisions to the southwest.

"We no longer have the ability to spread these tasks out," Finney said.