Norwich — Funding cuts this spring reduced the number of resource officers in public schools and ended the DARE program in elementary schools, but city police and school officials have found a way to bring officers into all city schools regularly this year.

On opening day Wednesday, officers assigned to daytime patrol duty and community policing started their rounds at their respective public schools, welcoming students and parents on the first day.

Throughout the school year, officers will visit each school at least a few times a week to mingle with students, have lunch, talk to teachers and parents and perhaps mentor individual students.

The new program was devised by school and police leaders in the wake of city budget cuts that left schools with only one full-time resource officer, Stephanie Reichard at Kelly Middle School, and also ended the drug education program at elementary schools.

Superintendent Abby Dolliver said without the new program, she might have asked Reichard to visit the city’s other schools at times — seven elementary schools and the new sixth-grade academy — but that would limit her time at Kelly, which is expected to have nearly 800 seventh- and eighth-graders this year.

“We don’t want to have to pull her out of the school to visit the other schools,” Dolliver said. “This will bring officers to all the schools at least a few times a week. We’re hoping to include mentoring opportunities as well. It’s great.”

Police Chief Louis Fusaro called the program a cost-effective way to establish good relations with students and families.

Because the officers will make the school stops as part of their regular patrol shifts, there will be no added cost to either the police or school budget.

About a dozen officers on daytime patrol and community policing shifts volunteered to “adopt a school.”

They will visit at different times of the day, different days of the week, adding an element of public safety to the schools.

“There’s a method in varying the times as well,” Fusaro said. “It gives the effect that there’s omnipresence if they see the police cars and officers there at various times during the day.”

c.bessette@theday.com

Twitter: @Bessettetheday