Loudoun County Sheriff Michael Chapman wants to begin expanding the school resource officer program to the Virginia county’s 65 elementary schools, as part of the agency’s first public strategic plan.
“We certainly have made a request to expand our SRO program to elementary schools — we’ve done that for several years now — but unfortunately, we haven’t met with success,” Chapman told WTOP.
As recently as last year, Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent Aaron Spence, while supporting the current SRO program, has stated he didn’t think expanding the armed officers in elementary schools would be beneficial.
“It’s not a cheap proposition,” said Chapman, whose recently-released five-year plan included beginning the expansion of SROs into elementary schools in 2026, and completing the expansion by 2030. “It’s an expensive proposition, but I think it would pay humongous dividends.”
All middle and high schools in the county’s public school system have SROs.
“We want to make sure that we protect the elementary schools as well,” Chapman said. “As you’ve seen over the years, there’s been attacks in elementary schools.”
Chapman said in addition to having armed deputies present in the event of an emergency, “It’s a matter of being there, being mentors to the children, being counselors to the children, having children at a very early age seeing law enforcement and deputies as their friends, not as an adversary.”
In the past, Spence has voiced support for the possibility of bringing in more school security officers — unarmed security guards, without law enforcement power.
“The fact of the matter is, if you have any kind of significant incident at a school, unarmed security is not going to be able to do much,” Chapman said. “They’re not part of our emergency response team, so they’re not going to know who to call, whether you need fire and rescue out there, whether you have a medical emergency, and what kind of steps that we take to notify parents.”
WTOP is seeking comment from Spence and LCPS.
Spence hasn’t spoken publicly about the LCSO five-year public strategic plan — which is available online. Adding SROs into elementary schools would require both the support of the Loudoun County School Board, and funding from Loudoun County’s Board of Supervisors.
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