Removal Of Police From Arlington Schools Handled Better Than In Alexandria: Board Chair

ARLINGTON, VA — Arlington County’s decision to remove school resource officers from county school buildings was not a knee-jerk move but was made with support from the community, according to the chair of the county’s school board.

Arlington Public Schools officials studied the issue of police officers in the county’s schools for several years before the Arlington School Board voted in June to remove school resource officers, School Board Chair Barbara Kanninen said Wednesday night at a virtual meeting hosted by the Arlington Committee of 100, a nonprofit civic group in Arlington.

Years of background work went into studying different methods for dealing with students and conflict resolution without police. “We were uniquely situated and prepared because of the work that we had already done,” Kanninen said.

As part of the preparation, an official Arlington County School Resource Officer Work Group was established by Arlington Public Schools and convened for more than a year to study the issue. In its recommendations report released earlier this year, the 48-member work group recommended that school resource officers "should not have permanent offices or a daily onsite presence in the schools."

The Arlington County School Board then voted unanimously in June to remove school resource officers from its buildings.

Officials in Alexandria, on the other hand, were deeply divided when the city council voted in May to eliminate funding for school resource officers, a unit of sworn officers within the Alexandria City Police Department.

After several recent safety-related incidents, the Alexandria City Council voted earlier this week to reinstate a temporary school resource officer program at Alexandria City Public Schools.

Among the incidents were the arrest of a student with a gun outside Alexandria City High School last week, prompting a school lockdown. At the Bradlee Shopping Center McDonald's near the high school, a juvenile was shot during a dispute on Sept. 21, and a fight happened at the McDonald's last Tuesday.

In her comments Wednesday night, Kanninen emphasized that the Alexandria City School Board and the superintendent of Alexandria’s schools did not support the removal of school resource officer funding.

SEE ALSO: Temporary School Resource Officer Program To Return In Alexandria

“They did not believe they had the resources in place. They felt they needed those SROs” for safety reasons inside schools, she said.

In fact, a school board member attended a city council meeting to urge Alexandria to keep the SRO program. Despite opposition from the Alexandria City School Board and the superintendent, the council decided in May to eliminate $789,909 from the 2022 budget that had been used to fund the SRO program.

Kanninen said Arlington County is in a different situation than Alexandria. “We believe that we have the resources and supports in place to keep our students as safe as possible,” she added.

At Wednesday night's meeting, Wayne Vincent, deputy chief of police for the Arlington County Police Department's Community Engagement Division, said the police department made it clear to the school board prior to the June vote that its 16 school resource officers would be reassigned to other parts of the police department if SRO funding was eliminated.

After making the decision to remove the SROs, if Arlington Public Schools decide to reverse course and vote to bring back the SRO program, it would take a minimum of 18 months to hire, train and have the police officers return to the schools, Vincent said. Along with reassignments, a few of the former SROs have retired, he noted.

As part of the vote earlier this year, the Arlington County Police Department will still provide services like driving and substance abuse education, as well as law enforcement support on an as-needed basis.

Over the next few months, Arlington Public Schools and the Arlington County Police Department will be working together to develop a new memorandum of understanding "to redefine and reimagine the relationship between the two organizations" The MOU is expected to be finalized in December.