When it comes to the return of school resource officers in Charlottesville, “the decision has already been made,” as officials repeatedly told parents at a forum last week.
But if the outcry from the roughly 100 parents gathered at Trailblazer Elementary School auditorium was any indication, people are still frustrated — frustrated with the decision, frustrated with the plan to reintegrate officers into school five years after they were removed and frustrated with the manner the school division administrators have handled the entire thing.
“People are here because they care. They care about this community. They care about these schools. They’re here telling you that there is a problem with this process,” said parent Ian Mullins toward the end of the lengthy and, occasionally, contentious Aug. 26 forum.
“There is a problem with this document, and I feel like we’re being ignored,” he continued.
Mullins was referring to the draft memorandum of understanding with the Charlottesville Police Department that was released earlier in August, a 19-page document outlining the various roles, responsibilities, operational procedures and underlying purposes for reinstating school resource officers at the division’s high school and middle school.
The Charlottesville School Board voted 4-2 to return officers to schools in late March after a five-year hiatus prompted by a nationwide racial reckoning in 2020 after the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a White police officer in Minneapolis. When officers were eliminated, a new safety model was adopted involving “care and safety assistants,” employees certified as school safety officers trained in deescalation, mental health first aid, safety procedures and more. But students, parents, teachers and administrators — the latter two often charged with patrolling the halls in officers’ stead — said the new model was ineffective and violence, absenteeism and reckless behavior at Charlottesville schools ticked up.
At the time of its March vote, the School Board did not have many details on what bringing school resource officers back would look like.
Now they do, and not everyone likes it.
As parents arrived at Trailblazer Elementary a few stood outside, distributing literature. Slips of paper directed them to an online petition written by four Charlottesville parents, raising multiple concerns they have with the draft memorandum, chief among them:
The unexplained increase in the number of school resource officers. Only two were originally proposed when the board voted back in March. The draft memorandum now includes four: two officers based at Charlottesville High School, one officer at Charlottesville Middle School and a supervisor to float between the two schools.The potential deputization of school resource officers to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in arrests and deportations of immigrant and refugee students.The lack of evidence from the school division indicating that law enforcement in schools won’t exacerbate racial disparities and absenteeism as well as no current plans to track these metrics should officers be brought back.School resource officers carrying police-issued firearms on school grounds.And the absence of both an independent oversight committee for school resource officers and community feedback incorporated in the decision to reinstate them.
As of Wednesday, the petition had garnered 213 signatures.
Whether the petition’s demands will be incorporated into a revised version of the memorandum remains to be seen. As it stands, the School Board is scheduled to hear an update on the memorandum’s finalization at its meeting Thursday.
Several participants at last week’s forum asked “if we can get a promise” from the board to delay the decision, allowing more time for community input and analysis.
“Your timeline has you making a decision in September,” said parent and co-author of the petition Natalie Aviles. “That doesn’t seem like a realistic timeline for you to actually revise an MOU that addresses our concerns, to actually look at alternative models and try and entertain a future where we’re protecting the civil liberties of our children in your schools.”
No such promises were made. School Board Member Lisa Larson-Torres, who cast one of the two dissenting votes in March, said it “would take a majority of the board to slow this down.”
Some of the petition’s demands were addressed in a brief presentation by the school’s supervisor of community relations, Beth Cheuk, at the beginning of the forum.
“Will the police carry guns? The answer is yes. We can talk about that more tonight,” she said. “That is CPD policy. It is kind of the national standard for SROs.”
Regarding the possibility of SROs being involved in ICE raids on school grounds, Cheuk emphasized the final memorandum will “really spell out clearly that we will not jeopardize or compromise our immigrant or refugee students through this program.”
“We definitely are following national developments closely,” she added. “The MOU even as it is … has an exit clause saying if local or national events flipped with our goals for this program, we or the CPD can put an end to the agreement.”
Despite those assurances, the tone and tenor of the 2 1/2-hour meeting remained one of frustration and skepticism.
For about half an hour, participants were split into two breakout sessions to provide space for smaller discussions. As talks were wrapping up, Charlottesville Superintendent Royal Gurley stepped in to say he personally conducted several focus groups with students in the spring to hear their concerns and opinions.
“Was that before or after the vote?” asked Shannon Gillikin, a teacher at Jackson-Via Elementary School in the city and the president of the Charlottesville teachers union.
“That was after the vote, but that was work, Ms. Gillikin, that was work that we were going to do anyway,” Gurley responded.
“Then why did you vote before that?” said Gillikin.
“Well, I mean, I’m not a school board member,” said Gurley, slightly raising his voice as others began to interject. “What we said going into that was that we were going to talk to students, and because the vote changed, I still was going to talk to students. So that was my commitment, and I’m still going to do that.”
School board members are not the only ones in favor of bringing back school resource officers. The principals of the city’s high school, middle school and alternative school Lugo-McGinness Academy, were among the panelists answering questions at the forum; all of them voiced their support for bringing the officers back.
“Police and law enforcement are already engaged with our schools,” said Charlottesville High Principal Justin Malone. “That’s not hypothetical. That is reality, right?”
Malone became head of the school last July in the wake of a tumultuous year marked by reports of students roaming the halls during class, starting fights and generally disobeying directions from adults. In November 2023, a dozens-strong brawl broke out at the high school, prompting a police response. Teachers said they were pushed to their breaking point, and they called out sick en masse and forced the division to cancel classes.
Having a specially trained officer in place “who has a sense of our culture, of our work … of a framework that helps to support what that relationship can look like,” Malone said from the panel, would be “an improvement” to having to call in an unknown officer off the street for emergencies.
The school division has also pointed out school resource officers would alleviate the burden on teachers and administrators.
Those explanations did not seem to satisfy most parents in the room.
“I heard a lot about how it would make administrators’ lives easier to have SROs. We’re parents; we care about our students’ lives and making our students’ lives better,” said Aviles. “I know how it makes administrators’ lives better. How about our kids?”
Source: www.dailyprogress.com