Henrico Schools, Police propose several changes to school resource officer agreement

Henrico Schools officials are seeking the public’s input about the latest iteration of an agreement with Henrico Police that governs the involvement of police officers on school property.

The proposed memorandum of understanding between the two bodies largely reflects the existing MOU, which was adopted in February 2019 and which generally explains the responsibilities of both agencies in the partnership.

Two of the four newly proposed clauses within the document are designed with the goal of ensuring that parents are informed before students are questioned or detained by police.

The first of those would require the school’s principal to “make a good faith effort to contact the student’s parent” prior to the beginning of any student interview by police, and if such contact cannot be made, the principal or another administrator would sit in on the interview with the student. The clause allows an exception if the chief of police or Henrico commonwealth’s attorney determines that an emergency or serious felony investigation would prevent such parental contact first.

The second related clause would require a parent or guardian to be contacted in person, electronically or by phone or video conference “prior to any custodial interrogation of a child by a law-enforcement officer who has arrested such child.”

Another newly proposed clause would mandate that a police official who wants to interview a student on campus as part of a criminal investigation must do so through the school resource officer in coordination with school administrators.

The fourth would require that an officer who enters the school to remove a student must first report to the principal’s office and coordinate with the principal or a designee the best approach for doing so.

As of last summer, there were 35 school resource officers in Henrico schools – one at each middle school and at least one at each high school.

In recent years, a plan to address concerns that SROs were being asked by school administrators to administer discipline to students resulted in a shift in structure in the county, so that school security officers began handling such situations. Separately, the county implemented a plan whereby many students who otherwise might have been arrested instead were directed to the juvenile justice system where they could receive support and help to address underlying issues.

A total of 23 students were arrested on Henrico school campuses during the past two school years, Henrico Police Lt. Col. Linda Toney told the Henrico Board of Supervisors and School Board last summer.

MOUs between school divisions and their public safety agencies that provide school resource officers to them now are required by Virginia law to be updated at least every two years, thanks to legislation authored last year by Henrico Delegate Schuyler VanValkenburg, who is also a social studies teacher at Glen Allen High School.

The law also:

• established the Virginia Center for School and Campus Safety and tasked it with a number of directives, including providing school safety training for public school personnel and a “model critical incident response training program” for public and private schools statewide;

• requires school systems annually to report data to the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services showing the use of force against students, “including the use of chemical, mechanical, or other restraints and instances of seclusion; detentions of students; arrests of students; student referrals to court or court service units; and other disciplinary actions by school resource officers involving students.”

Last July, VanValkenburg told the Citizen that the new standards “are important for a variety of reasons. They’re important for knowing where there’s overreach [by officers], they’re important for knowing exactly how they’re keeping schools safe.”

The school system’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Opportunity hosted a dozen meetings last fall and winter to solicit input from stakeholders that was used to revise the MOU.

Henrico Schools Superintendent Amy Cashwell and Chief of Police Eric English are expected to finalize the agreement sometime in March, after they’ve reviewed and considered any input.

The proposed MOU is available for review online.

To submit comments about it (due by March 7 at 11:59 p.m.), click here.