Charlottesville City Schools are moving ahead with plans to bring police officers back to campuses next year, and they are revising key documents governing how officers will interact with students.
In March, the School Board voted 4-2 to bring back police officers, called School Resource Officers, or SROs. The decision resulted in almost immediate pushback from several residents. Some parents and teachers say it was rushed, and the School Board needs to find a new way forward.
“It’s not too late to change course,” Charlottesville Education Association President Shannon Gillikin told the School Board at its Sept. 4 meeting. “There is no reason this proposal needs to move forward. Make a better decision.”
She’s not the only Charlottesville community member expressing concerns. During a community forum held over the summer, parents and teachers raised multiple concerns and questions, including the potential for students of color to be disproportionately targeted and whether SROs would cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
In response, Charlottesville City Schools (CCS) held a series of public “listening hours” throughout September and October and continued to refine the guidelines for SROs. Bianca Johnson, family engagement coordinator for CCS, said during a Nov. 6 School Board meeting that two documents will govern officers’ interactions with students: the general Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between CCS and the Charlottesville Police Department (CPD) and the Standard Operating Procedures, or SOP, a “living document” that would be used for daily guidelines.
The SOP in its current form requires SROs to defer to CCS administrators in many cases, and states that “as a general practice, unless there is a clear and imminent threat to safety, the SRO should act only upon request of school administrators.”
Some examples of when an SRO can act independently include when a student “poses substantial harm to the physical well-being” of themselves or others; if someone is trespassing on school property; or if the officer witnesses selling or distribution of illicit drugs or suspected overdoses.
Johnson emphasized, however, that staff “must understand” that SROs are not to be called to handle behavioral issues with students.
Those who attended the listening hours also wanted to know more about SROs day-to-day functions, while ensuring that schools maintain a warm and welcoming environment for students.
“In general, as time went on, the info hours became focused on the changes to the MOU and the development of the SOP,” Beth Cheuk, the supervisor for community relations for CCS said in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow. “And we received feedback that these refinements were what the community had been asking for. The community feedback has been a very helpful part of the process.”
While the process to return of SROs has been met with some community pushback, School Board Vice Chair Amanda Burns has steadily defended the decision, saying, “Our kids should be able to come into school each morning and be focused on learning, and teachers should be focused on teaching; not whether they’re physically safe or whether there are fights or threats or safety incidents.”
Burns added that many teachers supported SROs, and cited a string of incidents in 2023 that included fights at Charlottesville High School and an 18-year-old trespassing on CHS school property. The situation worsened to the point that in November 2023, the school was forced to close its doors because so many teachers were absent, some of whom called out in protest.
Parents and teachers surprised by School Board vote
In August during a “Can I Talk To You Cville” event held at Trailblazer Elementary, many parents were opposed to SROs coming back to schools.
“People are telling you that there’s a problem with this document, that there’s a problem with this process, and you’re not listening,” said Ian Mullins, parent of a fourth grader, referring to the draft MOU. Mullins elaborated that his concerns stemmed from “systemic problems” within CPD, including policing “people of color at much higher rates and with more severity” and lack of robust oversight of officers.
CPD’s most recent annual report doesn’t lay out details on the racial background of the people it arrests or on use-of-force investigations. However, according to the report, in 2024, 62% of residents who were subject to traffic stops were white, and 32% were Black or African Americans between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30 of that year. Black residents comprise about 15% of the population in the city, and white residents about 65%, according to the latest national Census data from 2020. (Residents who identify as two or more races make up about 7% of the city’s population).
There were also 39 total complaints against CPD, 21 of which were internal, according to the report.
Others said that the School Board should have engaged more with the community before any decision was made.
“The school board, or actually the school administration, started talking about the process of returning police to our schools over a year ago now, and we’ve been kind of consistently waiting for the point where they’re seeking community input,” said Alix Heintzman, a mother of two children in second and fourth grade, in an interview with Charlottesville Tomorrow, following the event at Trailblazer.
She went on to describe the suddenness of the decision. “The timeline is that ‘we’re going to get the community feedback over the summer of 2025 [to] develop an MOU’, and then the school board will vote on whether to adopt it,” Heintzman said. “But instead, right after they sent that email, the Board voted to adopt the policy four to two, without any community engagement at all.”
Heintzman attended several of the listening hours later hosted by CCS and said that while she was “glad to see the district finally engaging directly with families, staff, and students,” it was obvious that the decision to return the SROs had already been made, and she alluded that the engagement sessions weren’t truly meant to gather community input.
“At the session I attended, at Westhaven, one woman asked why no one was taking notes or recording, if the district was really collecting feedback. [CCS Superintendent] Dr. Gurley said they were just there to listen and confirmed that SROs were returning,” Heintzman said in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow. “Another parent said: ‘So it doesn’t really matter what we say now.’ A middle school teacher who attended one of their virtual sessions reported a similar interaction.”
Despite this, Heintzman is relieved that the MOU has been changed to address some of the concerns parents had, which were topics of the online petition. The petition demanded that the district outline the role of the SROs, in particular their involvement with the federal immigration agency, the reduction of officers in schools and that CCS collect data on the presence of SROs on students, among the few amendments outlined.
“I think a lot of us are relieved at the revisions to the MOU, which were made in response to our petition and general community outrage,” Heintzeman said.
Charlottesville Education Association President Gillikin, who is also a mother and kindergarten teacher at Jackson-Via Elementary, said administrators did not adequately incorporate teacher feedback when deciding to bring back SROs. She added that the working group — the body that was formed after the school board voted to bring back SROs, to gather community feedback — only spoke to principals and not teachers.
“When they say that ‘staff are on the working group,’ they only mean principals,” she said. “They did focus groups only at the high school; not the middle school, which is going to be impacted by this new policy.”
However, CCS said it has consistently spoken with teachers and parents about SROs and school safety.
“[Charlottesville City School] teachers have been consulted about school safety (including SROs) in multiple ways since the Board decided to remove SROs from the safety program in 2020,” CCS Community Relations Coordinator Amanda Korman wrote in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow. She added that teachers were also included in a survey sent out to the community asking if they’d like to learn more about the Youth Resource Officers program. (YROs and SROs are terms often used interchangeably to refer to law enforcement officers working in schools.)
Korman was referring to a survey sent to parents and teachers in February 2024. Data from the survey shared by CCS with Charlottesville Tomorrow showed that about 69% of staff chose “agree” or “strongly agree” when asked, “Do we want to further explore the role of adding Youth Resource Officers to our current safety model?”
However, some attendees at the August event who had taken the survey took issue with how the questions were presented and how responses were interpreted.
“Wanting to know more is not saying ‘do we want to have SROs back?'” one parent said during one of the breakout sessions at Trailblazer, to the agreement of most of those at the gymnasium.
Natalie Aviles, a parent of a 9-year-old fourth grader and co-author of the online petition to make changes to the original MOU, said that she believes the recent elections which resulted in the addition of Zyahna Bryant to the School Board, “reflect the community’s displeasure with the SRO issue,” in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow.
“I am heartened after this School Board election to see someone who will be more critical about the process, and more accountable to voters’ concerns, on the School Board,” she said.
Bryant, a long-time activist, became the youngest elected CCS School Board member when she secured nearly 27% of the votes, the highest of the four candidates seeking the three open seats. In an interview with Charlottesville Tomorrow after her win, she said she believed that the community was ready for a change.
As part of her activist efforts, Bryant — while still a student in CCS — led a student walkout in 2019, as a form of protest for racial justice and equity. Years earlier, in 2016, Bryant petitioned City Council to remove the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from downtown Charlottesville.
Data paints mixed picture on SRO effectiveness
Charlottesville has had SROs before, but the city removed them several years ago, in part due to questions about their effectiveness. In June 2020, Charlottesville City Schools removed SROs and released a video stating “data did not indicate having an SRO leads to better outcomes on day-to-day events or emergencies.”
When asked what changed, Korman said it was the struggle to provide adequate safety.
“What school staff have learned in the five years since we made the video is that the schools continue to struggle with the absence of on-site police to do state-required tasks, for which they have expertise that school staff do not,” said Korman. “In addition, the schools have found that having mutually selected, specially trained police who understand school routines and build relationships with the school community is better than having whichever officer is available in the moment when needed.”
Some of the state-required tasks that SROs perform are conducting “threat assessments,” which involve investigating and potentially intervening “with individuals whose behavior may pose a threat to the safety of the school, staff, or students,” according to statewide guidelines for public schools compiled by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services.
Since the removal of SROs, the number of times police have been dispatched to Charlottesville schools has varied. According to a 2024 Safety and Security Update from City Schools and the CPD, there were 138 dispatches of officers to a Charlottesville school as of May in the 2023-2024 school year. This was a considerable decline from previous years, which had 254 dispatches and 290 dispatches for the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years, respectively.
The update also reports that the CPD has had 88 threat assessments for the 2023-2024 school year, with 85 and 105 for school years 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 respectively.
According to CPD Liaison Lt. Greg Wade, school administrators contact police at least three times a week on average.
Broader research on SRO effectiveness remains divided. A 2023 independent study led by Lucy Sorensen, associate professor at the University at Albany, shows that SRO presence reduces fights on campus but leads to harsher punishments. A 2024 Brookings study showed that “schools with SROs experience an increase in gun-related offenses and disciplinary punishments such as expulsions, in-school suspensions, and out-of-school suspensions. However, schools with SROs also report fewer incidents of physical assault and threats without a weapon.”
Some parents worried about cooperation with ICE
During the August community engagement event, when some parents voiced their concerns at the possibility of CPD working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, Superintendent Royal Gurley said that students’ safety will not be compromised.
“We will not jeopardize or compromise the safety of immigrant students,” said Gurley, adding that the role of the SRO is to bring safety back into the schools and “not to police children.”
This was because the first draft of the MOU between City Schools and the CPD did not explicitly state if SROs will not collaborate with ICE. That was significant for some parents.
“There’s no promise in writing that CPD won’t enforce immigration for students or their families,” said Natalie Aviles, in a follow-up interview with Charlottesville Tomorrow. Aviles was one of the co-authors of the online petition that asked for changes in the MOU, and language that clarified the role of CPD and immigration enforcement.
“And we’re in a situation where any child who does get arrested and referred to the juvenile justice system, is going to be in a context where corrections officers are deputized to work with ICE,” she said.
Aviles elaborated that her concern lies with schools not being a protected space anymore.
Just hours after President Donald Trump began his second term, the administration revoked a policy that protected schools, hospitals, and places of worship from immigration enforcement activities, such as arrests, searches, and questioning.
And in February, Gov. Youngkin signed an executive order ordering state police to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement officers.
“One of our concerns is that we don’t want CPD to voluntarily cooperate with ICE or the Department of Homeland Security to enforce immigration,” said Aviles. “They have sort of stated this, but it’s nowhere in writing.”
Aviles was referring to a brief statement made by Lt. Wade, at the Aug. 7 School Board meeting. Wade told Board members that the Chief Michael Kochis has “no plans” to work with ICE agents.
In a follow up interview with Charlottesville Tomorrow, Lt. Wade said that in order for a department like CPD to assist agencies like ICE, they would have to enter into a signed contract with the federal government, known as a 287(g) agreement. He also reiterated his previous statement that Kochis has no intention of assisting ICE.
“Our chief has been very clear that we’re not going to do that; he has no plans to do that,” said Wade.
Following questions and feedback from parents, a second draft of the MOU was published in October where it clearly states should CPD begin working with federal immigration agents, the “MOU will become null and void effective immediately.”
School Board moving forward with approval of key documents
Johnson said that the final drafts of the MOU and SOP will be presented to the School Board on Dec. 4 for approval. Once approved, the documents will be signed by Gurley and Kochis.
After that, CPD will begin the four-stage selection process for SROs, which starts with currently employed officers applying for the role, and ends with interview panels that will include representatives from both CPD and City Schools, parents, teachers and students, according to Gurley.
SROs will undergo a 40-hour mandatory training that includes disaster and emergency response, mediation, conflict resolution and de-escalation techniques, and current research on child and teen brain development. SROs will receive additional training in interacting with youth with disabilities, crisis intervention and implicit bias, according to Lt. Wade.
CCS says they’re making progress toward finalizing the MOU and SOP documents in preparation for officers returning to schools next year.
“We received useful, detailed feedback about the MOU,” Korman said via email. “Our initial reaction is that we can incorporate most of this feedback into the MOU or Standard Operating Procedures.”
