11 organizations ask Henrico School Board to remove all police officers from schools

Eleven local, regional and state organizations have joined several individual citizens in penning a letter to the Henrico School Board urging it to remove all police officers from the county’s public schools or implement five other recommendations.

The March 11 letter came in response to a call last month for input to the proposed revision of the school system’s memorandum of understanding with Henrico Police, which governs the school resource and school security officer program in the county’s schools. The system proposed only four primary changes to its existing MOU – two that seek to ensure that parents are notified before students are questioned or detained by police in school and two others that would require involvement of school administrators prior to police interviewing or removing students from school.

In their letter, the groups cited research that they say shows that removing SROs from schools is most beneficial for students of color, those with disabilities and those who are LGBTQ+.

“Research shows that SROs increase arrests in school and suspension rates, particularly for students of color and LGBTQ youth,” the groups wrote. “Generally these arrests are for minor offenses, such as simple assault, resulting in greater numbers of children than necessary being exposed to the criminal justice system. Additionally, there is no research evidence to suggest that SROs prevent school shootings.”

The letter was signed by the Legal Aid Justice Center, Equality Virginia, Virginia Organizing-Richmond Chapter, Together We Will Henrico, the Virginia Council on LGBTQ+, I Vote for Me, Neighborhood Resource Center, Performing Statistics, Side by Side, Advocates for Justice and Henrico PACES and Lorraine Wright, Kandise Lucas and Zoe Spencer.

While Virginia state code allows local school systems to employ resource officers in their buildings, it doesn’t mandate that they do so.

As an alternative suggestion to removal of all officers, the group made five recommendations to the school board:

• that it specify its data collection procedures and objectives to decrease disproportionate arrests of Black students in schools, and that it track and make public data related to use of force against students in schools;

• that it add provisions to publicize the location of the MOU on the school system’s website and conduct quarterly meetings with Henrico Police to review it;

• that it ensure training is conducted for an SRO within 60 days of his or her assignment to a school;

• that it ensure all SROs and school security officers are “properly trained to interact positively with all students, including LGBTQ students, especially LGBTQ students of color;”

• that it establish a group of students, teachers, parents and community members to make recommendations to the MOU.

The groups cited data from the 2018-19 school year that they said showed Black students (who compose about 36% of the school system’s population) accounted for more than 75% of all short-term and long term suspensions in the 2018-19 school year.

“[E]ven when SROs are not directly involved in school discipline, their presence can shift schools’ practices in subtle ways that make exclusionary discipline more likely,” the group wrote.