From saving on school supplies to the impact of federal cuts, the WTOP team is studying up on hot-button topics in education across the D.C. region. Follow on air and online in our series, “WTOP Goes Back to School” this August and September.
The fiery debate over policing during the pandemic led many communities to reevaluate how their departments did the job — and led school systems around the country to think twice about and even reconsider the positioning of police officers inside of schools.
School resource officers, or SROs, were once common throughout the country. But many areas, primarily liberal leaning ones, began to question whether they were necessary.
After lots of discussion around the region, some schools decided to move ahead and try something different.
Today, Prince William, Fairfax, Loudoun, Charles and Prince George’s counties’ police departments still put at least one officer inside every public middle and high school. D.C. Public Schools have them, though many officers are assigned to a cluster of schools — meaning an officer isn’t always present during the school day.
Last month, the city’s inspector general found “critical gaps” in how safety is maintained inside of schools, which led the school system to promise it would coordinate with D.C. police to determine if adding more SROs into city schools was also needed. It comes on the heels of efforts by the D.C. Council to eliminate the program back in 2021, though that decision was later reversed.
The report documented that these days, 71% of D.C. schools lack regular SRO presence now that the program has 60 fewer officers compared to before the pandemic.
Both D.C. police and DCPS declined to speak about the current situation going into the school year.
Today, two school systems around the region still operate without SROs. In Arlington County, there’s no consideration being made to bring them back.
“We have 50 or 51 really well trained school safety coordinators, and their focus is on building positive relationships with students and staff,” said Bethany Zecher Sutton, who chairs the Arlington School Board.
She said leaders of that program are former SROs with the county, and that the school system still invites police inside of schools for both training programs and for events like the first day of school. They just aren’t in schools on a daily basis.
“What we do have is clarity about what kinds of problems, in fact, require referral into the criminal justice system,” she said. “In other words, we know exactly when we do need to call in the police department.”
She said when those events occur, response time is still very quick. But Zecher Sutton also admitted that not everyone in the community agrees with the decision that’s been made. Among them is Reade Bush, who said he still advocates for special needs children in the county even though he no longer has his children in the school system.
“There are times when schools or principals will call the police into the school to assist because a special needs student has gotten dysregulated, and when the SROs used to be part of the actual school, they knew the students, they knew their needs, and they were able to help those kids very directly,” Bush said. “Now, when police are called to assist a disabled student who has gotten dysregulated, they’re often getting a regular patrol officer who has no idea of that student, or perhaps even the staff at the school, they have no idea the student’s specific needs.”
Zecher Sutton sees things differently.
“We do hear from both students and parents in our annual survey that they feel safe at school,” she said. “We have a high level of students, families and staff members reporting that they feel safe in school.”
And she said those numbers have actually improved in recent years.
“We’re really proud of what we’ve put into place,” she added. “I think what I would say is, it takes some dedication. It takes some very careful planning and it does take a couple of years of adjustment.”
While she wasn’t on the school board when the policy was changed, she believes there’s no reason to revert back to the old policy.
That seems to be the situation in Montgomery County too. The county eliminated its SRO program in favor of community engagement officers. Those security officers patrol near, but not inside the schools.
“My personal opinion is removing them — their dedicated focus to the high school was not a good move,” said Ashique Tanveer, who is the president of the Clarksburg High School PTSA. “I would have suggested something different in between — hybrid where there’s more mentoring and coaching the officers to do things a little bit differently to address the concerns — the reason they were removed.”
His daughter, Samara, and her friend Riya Vijayan, who are both getting ready for their sophomore years at Clarksburg, also wondered if the decision was more drastic than it needed to be.
“I think last year there was definitely a lot more violence at our school without them, and teachers didn’t know how to handle it,” said Samara.
They both wondered if students felt more emboldened to misbehave or act out knowing there wasn’t a police officer inside.
“I feel like when students realize there’s an experienced officer on campus, they would be scared to actually start a fight, because teachers don’t really know how to handle it,” said Vijayan. “The worst they can do is, what, give you a suspension? While police officers can do other things.”
Ashique had those same concerns his daughter and her friend did. His perception is that other students took advantage of it too.
“I would say, initially, there were more incidents,” he said. But he also believes the school system has responded with better training and outcomes in response to it. However, he also believes those smaller situations occur because students know there isn’t an actual law enforcement officer inside.
“I definitely think they could add, at least, one police officer to schools,” said his daughter. “But adding too much may be overwhelming.”
But are those sentiments more anecdotal than accurate? In the two years prior to the most recent school year that finished, Montgomery County Public Schools officials said there were only 18 total attacks against students (six in 2022-23, 12 in 2023-24) and just one fight at Clarksburg High School.
The most recent student climate survey given in 2023-24 found that over 80% of students who responded (648, or 30% of the Clarksburg student body) felt safe in school. That was on par with high school students countywide who took the survey. Numbers for the most recent school year weren’t available.
The school system also said it’s in the midst of a safety assessment at each school, including a focus on blind spots, staffing and the visibility of security there.
Both students also suggested the racial politics associated with policing, which influenced the decision by MCPS, had some validity. That’s also one of the reasons cited by the school system in Arlington for maintaining the status quo.
“There’s been a lot of research that indicates that the presence of SROs sometimes can have a negative impact for minority students and for students with disabilities,” said Zecher Sutton. “That sometimes results in increased disciplinary actions and disproportionate disciplinary actions against those students.”
WTOP reached out to MCPS in the hopes of getting the system’s perspective on the transition now that it’s been in effect for a couple of years. It chose not to respond.
“Some of them tend to abuse their authority and like they don’t treat students correctly,” Samara said. “So I think that could also be a problem. But overall, having one is way more helpful than what we have right now.”
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