EDITOR'S NOTE: The city of Champaign plans to make $2 million worth of budget cuts before the end of the fiscal year in June, and officials are already planning next year's reductions. On top of the $9 million in budget gaps during the past several years, further cuts will inevitably affect the services residents perceive, officials say. The News-Gazette has taken a closer look at the service reductions and in this five-part series – running on consecutive Sundays until March 13 – will detail what residents could lose.

CHAMPAIGN – Beckie Heller knows what kind of effect a high school can have on its surrounding neighborhood: She has lived just east of Centennial High for 23 years and has seen the worst of it.

"This neighborhood has a lot of unique issues because of the high school," she said. "And the problems just kept escalating."

She is the captain of the neighborhood watch group, and used to see all the problems that come along with loitering teenagers – trash, fights, and in extreme cases, lewd acts in residents' backyards. A grocery near the school had banned students from coming inside, and gas station managers cringed when teenagers walked in.

Even gatherings of students during lunch hours on public sidewalks – where they are allowed to be – became intimidating, Heller said.

Some residents "would not have left their house between 11 and 1 because they didn't want these kids to see them leaving their house unattended," she said.

But that changed when Champaign police officer Ed Wachala showed up, she said. Wachala is the school resource officer in residence at Centennial High School, and he is part of a program that was threatened with cuts early in the city's budgeting process. The program in its entirety is safe for now, but police chief R.T. Finney said he's considering all his options as he plans for the future.

"He (Wachala) brought a sense of order that the school and the neighborhood needs, and a sense of security, and not from a strong-handed way," Heller said.

The city and the Champaign school district collaborate in putting uniformed officers in five schools – Centennial and Central high schools and Edison, Franklin and Jefferson middle schools. Officers have been assigned to schools for years, but 2005 was the first time police worked out of school offices rather than out of the police station.

When city budgeters began planning $2 million worth of cuts that they expected would happen before the end of the fiscal year this June, a $117,166 line item which includes salary, benefits and the cost of a vehicle for one of the five school resource officers was among the suggestions for services to cut. Earlier this year, when city officials released a revised list of potential spending reductions, the school resource officer suggestion was replaced with a recommendation to reduce the overall police force by one sworn officer.

Police Chief R.T. Finney said the city's contractual arrangement with the Champaign school district forced the department to reconsider the cut. The school district pays $241,821, the equivalent of the costs of two of the five officers, for the program.

The contract is renewed on a year-to-year basis, which means it expires at the end of this fiscal year, and Finney said nothing in the police department's budget is immune to cuts.

"I don't think there's anything that's off the table in my opinion," Finney said.

City budgeters are working on next year's spending plan, and there is no word yet on whether the school resource officer program might take a hit. City officials will need advice from the city council before they make a decision.

Even if the program took a cut, the original recommendation in what is now a defunct list of potential cuts was to reduce the school force from five to four, which would mean two schools would need to share one officer. Never has it been suggested publicly to cut the program entirely.

But Heller fears that if an officer doesn't have a permanent presence in the school, then all the neighborhood's problems could return.

"If you really want to see mayhem, pull him (Wachala) out," Heller said.

In uniform, Wachala could be an intimidating presence. With close-cut hair and a gun at his side, he looks the part of an authoritative, paramilitary official and stands out from the group of teenagers and teachers that crowd the hallway.

But looks can be deceiving.

"I give them way too many chances," Wachala said.

Wachala patrols the neighborhood in his marked Champaign police car during the school's lunch hour, when some of the students are allowed to leave school property.

The first problem he encounters on this day is a handful of male students walking down the middle of a residential street. The sidewalks are covered in ice, so instead of writing citations for each person in the group, Wachala asks them to stay out of the road when they can. It's a hazard, he says, and it was a big problem when he first began patroling the neighborhood.

"I try to be nice to them," Wachala said. "I don't think busting their chops about little stuff like that does any good."

Trash was a bigger problem, he said, and underage smoking during lunch hours was persistent. He came up with a method to remedy both: If he catches a student smoking, instead of handing out a ticket, he hands out a garbage bag for the student to "work it off" by picking up trash in the neighborhood.

For the students, it's another lesson in respect, he says.

"You have to learn to be a good custodian of the environment," he says as he continues his patrol.

As he passes another group of teenagers standing on the sidewalk, he does not roll down his window to say anything, but he does slow down to shoot them a look from the driver's seat. They are not doing anything wrong where they are, but he wants to make his presence known – a preemptive strike on any ideas they might have.

Only a few students are outside on this particular day, probably a side-effect of the below-freezing temperatures, so he takes the extra time to drive to a nearby Circle K, where a belligerent student, he heard, had caused some problems the day before.

The manager, Dawna Woodworth, is happy to see Wachala walk in. She does not know much about the incident, but she appreciates his investigation. Were Wachala not around, she says, "I would have no one to even threaten them with."

The lunch hour is near its end, so Wachala drives back to the school. He parks his squad out front and runs into a few students as he heads inside. He waves at one, and the student waves back. He ribs another about the beard he is growing.

Wachala knows the kids, and they know him – he's hard to miss in his police uniform, but school officials say a lot of the students see him as a filter before something happens.

And he has a lot more background on his students than any detective would ever have time to compile. An investigator looking for information about stolen property, for example, "would come in at ground zero" without the intelligence Wachala can provide, he said.

He sees every case and arrest involving his students, even the incidents that occur outside of school. And he says he knows how to talk to each one on an individual level.

"You know the students," Wachala says. "You know how they're going to react when you go talk to them."

Almost immediately upon stepping into the cafeteria, Wachala is summoned to the administrative office. A student's cell phone has gone missing, probably stolen.

The rest of Wachala's afternoon is consumed by normal duties: He speaks with students and administrators, sometimes he meets with parents and he teaches a drug education course.

His office has no windows and is somewhat secluded in a small hallway. It's a quiet space to talk, and five chairs surround his desk. "It's very often that they're all full," he says.

Students sometimes come in to tell him about a fight they know is about to break out, he says. If he can't help the participants resolve the issue beforehand, at least he knows where he'll have to be to break it up.

The school resource officer program is a cooperative effort among all five officers, Wachala said, like when he worked with his counterpart at Jefferson Middle School to locate a stolen iPod. The two officers only had the first name of the suspect, but they had a good idea of which student it was.

When the day's final bell rings, Wachala takes his position outside at the intersection of William Street and Crescent Drive. Traffic from buses, students driving out of the parking lot and parents parking on the curb to pick up their kids is starting to get dense.

Wachala keeps the traffic moving, occasionally stopping to make sure the students who aren't using the crosswalk know he's watching.

Directing traffic is another one of Wachala's solutions to a persistent neighborhood problem. A lot of fights had been starting in front of the school, but "by getting the buses in as quick as we can and getting the students out of here as quick as we can, we're having less problems."

Tomorrow he'll do it again. Even if he misses one day, he says, he loses ground in the transformation of the neighborhood.

"It's like trying to dig a hole in the ocean," he says. "Once you make some room, all the water comes rushing back."