Loudoun County’s Board of Supervisors voted to remove funding to expand the school resource officer program into elementary schools from next year’s budget, a step the sheriff who oversees the initiative called “short-sighted.”
During a work session on the fiscal 2027 proposed budget, supervisors voted Monday night to withdraw the proposal from the spending plan. In its initial phase, Sheriff Mike Chapman said at least 15 SROs would be added to elementary schools, with the goal of having them on all 62 campuses within four years.
The first year of the program would have cost over $5 million. Board Chair Phyllis Randall, for one, urged Chapman to get the expansion into the memorandum of understanding that the program operates under.
Last week, the school board voted on a motion that said it wouldn’t support expanding the SRO program until the involved parties go through the memorandum of understanding process.
“It’s a very simple fix to make sure that we’re on the front side of any kind of issue that could happen,” Chapman told WTOP. “You hear about these incidents that happen, and then they try to (say), ‘Well, the data doesn’t support this or that.’”
Currently, there are SROs in every Loudoun County middle and high school. When there’s a call for service at an elementary school, middle school SROs are tasked with responding, the sheriff’s office said.
Nearby school divisions, including Arlington and Prince William counties, don’t have SROs in elementary schools.
LCPS parents comment on the potential of SROs
Critics of the expansion worry about the impact on students. Proponents, however, say the step is necessary to respond to a growing number of threats.
Chapman said the increase in calls at elementary schools has been “astronomical.” There were 1,649 calls last school year, and over 7,000 the last four years, according to a news release published Tuesday.
“There’s a lot of activity going on at the schools, and it’s not just about the kids,” Chapman said. “It’s about making sure that they keep safe. But you also have issues there, like with custody issues, with parents showing up, and there are things that can explode out of nowhere.”
At a school board meeting last week, one parent told board members that the “equitable thing to do is to provide elementary children with the same level of safety middle and high school students are receiving.”
Another suggested the idea should “give us pause. Will it make all of our students safer, or could it lead to devastating actions for my dear daughter’s peers and their family?”
Instead of adding SROs to elementary schools, supervisors proposed spending over $2 million to create six new SRO positions in the budget. The roles would help add coverage when SROs are on leave, vacation or sick.
“It’s not our long-term solution,” Chapman said. “However, it’s a good stopgap measure.”
Chapman said he’s planning to keep pushing to expand the SRO program, citing the distinct training deputies get and the relationships they’re able to form with students.
The agency tried to expand the program in 2019, 2024 and 2025, Chapman said.
The crime response is “such a small part of this,” Chapman said. “The part of this is developing relationships, developing trust, developing confidence, developing these things that really keep us intertwined with the community that we serve.”
A Board of Supervisors vote on the budget is scheduled for April.
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