The Alexandria City Council this week agreed to put the funding for School Resource Officers in contingent reserve, effectively ending the SRO program while city staff, the police department and school system officials figure out new ways to support youth mental health while keeping schools safe.
Council members discussed the issue for more than two hours during a city budget add/delete work session on Monday — the last budget meeting before City Council adopted the City’s budget Wednesday evening in a special session.
Alexandria City Public Schools officials, city staff and the police department will have to come up with a plan for implementing changes for how the Alexandria Police Department and ACPS work together, and present that plan to city council in the coming months.
During the meeting, Council Member Canek Aguirre said he wanted to reassure residents that “no one is being fired, everyone is going to keep their jobs, and this is not saying that police cannot interact with city youth — so this is a continued conversation of how we’re trying to move forward with reimagining public safety.”
Nationwide Movement Arrives in Alexandria
In the past several years, a movement for police-free public schools has gained steam nationwide, including here.
Ashley R. Moore, an attorney at the Legal Aid Justice Center, spoke in support of Tenants & Workers United youth and other students who have been calling for police-free schools in Alexandria. She called for city council to divest the nearly $800,000 SRO budget and instead invest in other programs that are focused on strengthening students’ mental health. (See the legal center's letter to Alexandria city council members here.)
Moore called the budget session “an opportunity to remove SROs and instead hire actual counselors and mentors who are specifically trained and equipped to focus on student well-being.” She also argued that SROs are not needed to keep students safe.
Maria Pilar, an ACPS parent of a high school student and longtime resident, said she believes SROs can be intimidating to students and the program is unnecessary. She said reappropriating the funds from the program to mental health would be a good start.
The City of Alexandria had allocated about $790,000 for the SRO program in the upcoming budget, including salaries for an SRO sergeant and several officers in the middle schools and high school.
School Board Support for SROs
In the fall of 2020, City Council, the Alexandria City Public Schools Board and the Alexandria Police Department signed an updated Memorandum of Understanding with the purpose “to establish a mutually beneficial framework that both schools and law enforcement can work within to achieve shared goals.”
Those goals include clearly defined roles and responsibilities, maintaining a safe school environment and growing “a positive and supportive school safety climate.” The MOU, which is routinely updated on a bi-annual basis, was scheduled to be revisited this fall.
As part of the MOU process, the school board voted 6 – 3 earlier this academic year in support of keeping SROs in place and had reached out to the community about the role of SROs to consider the concerns of parents and students.
Alexandria City Public Schools spokesperson, School and Community Relations Chief Julia Burgos said after Monday's city council decision: "We respect the City Council’s decision and will be working with our team to continue to maintain a safe and secure environment for students and staff in our buildings."
During Monday evening’s meeting, Council Member Amy Jackson brought up the school board’s support for the SRO program and noted that there are many parents, teachers and students who do feel safe having an SRO on campus.
“My concern is that when we are putting this [money] in a contingency, we are defunding the police department,” she said. “And, we’re undercutting and undermining the authority of the school board who…already has heard from their constituency under the schools. They have heard from the teachers, the administrators, the students, and this was, on this matter, the vote they chose to go with. Just because we do have the funding does not mean that we should be thinking we know more than our school board members, superintendent, principals, all other administrators, teachers and students that do feel safe with the SROs in their schools.”
Aguirre noted that the school board’s decision to support the SROs was not unanimous, some board members were on the fence just before voting, and it is common for governmental bodies to disagree.
“I wish there was a broader community conversation to have on that so we can kind of educate folks, but I think that where I sit, I feel comfortable having the information I have and having the conversations that I’ve had, to be able to move forward with this,” Aguirre said.
The School Resource Unit (SRU) started in 1997 as a partnership between Alexandria City Public Schools, the City Manager’s Office, City Council and the Alexandria Police Department. At the beginning, one School Resource Officer (SRO) was assigned to George Washington Middle School. Finding success, the program grew over the past 23 years to both middle schools and the high school.
SROs attend specialized training provided by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services — Center for School Safety in addition to training through ACPS and other sources. In addition to being trained to deal with an active shooter situation, SROs are trained in handling students in emotional distress, school policies, searches on school grounds and more.
The SRO program is just one of many ways the Alexandria Police Department tries to connect with local youth. Alexandria Police Chief Michael Brown, who attended the Monday night meeting primarily to answer questions, said other youth programs would continue.
“We believe in a strong commitment to our youth, we just don’t have the same access and the venue that we currently have in the school when we’re there, but that does not mean that we shut down with our youth and we don’t connect with them,” Brown said.
Reallocating Funds
Removing police from the schools as a policy decision is something that the City Council could do at any time during the year, Mayor Justin Wilson said. But moving money into a contingent reserve fund is something that can only happen during the budget process, which is why there was some urgency to make a decision to either move the funding or leave it in place, he explained.
The school board, tied up with figuring out how to get children back into school buildings during an ongoing pandemic, has not engaged in a conversation on the role of SROs and school safety issues to the extent some city council members would have liked to see.
During Monday night’s meeting, Council Member John Chapman said that simply removing SROs does not do enough to push along a much-needed broader conversation about safety and security in school buildings, school culture, equity and other related issues. He suggested putting the money set aside for the SRO program into a contingent reserve, “and ask ACPS to do a number of things in order to consider the release of those funds.” Those things included asking ACPS to “reimagine” their relationship with the police department and putting in place programs and supports to encourage students to develop relationships with adults in the school system.
In addition, Chapman wanted to make sure that students have a formal opportunity to weigh in on the decision. “I really want ACPS to do the work and show our community exactly how our schools would function without SROs. This should not be pie-in-the-sky stuff, this should be exactly what things will look like, and how will students and their parents be ensured that their students are safe.” He pointed to other school systems, including Charlottesville, Virginia, that made the decision to remove SROs after extensive community engagement and discussions about safety and mental health support.
Ultimately, Chapman’s proposal did not gain support from enough other council members to proceed.
In a way, removing the funds is a means to force more in-depth conversations with the school board, police department and community about school safety, school culture, racial equity and related issues, Aguirre said.
“By making this move, I think we’re sending a strong signal that we want to have this larger community dialogue and that we’re going to have this conversation,” Aguirre said. “This is basically forcing it to happen.”
Earlier in the budget process for the fiscal year starting July 1, Council Member Mo Seifeldein suggested putting funding currently used for the SRO program in a contingent reserve and asking staff to come up with ways to spend that money on mental health and other services for students. His suggestions included increasing mental health resources in public schools, adding resources to the Teen Wellness Center and more.
It was Seifeldein’s proposal that won out when Chapman threw his support behind it. The SRO funding will be put into contingent reserve and city staff will work on figuring out the best way to use that funding in ways that will support mental health and wellness for Alexandria youth.
