School Board to receive SRO, health updates at Thursday meeting

The Henrico School Board today will meet to receive an update from its health committee and hear updates about the school resource officer program.

The health committee is evaluating data according to a four-tiered approach; the planned fully virtual return for the first nine weeks for most students is tier 2, while the next tier would be a hybrid of in-person and virtual learning and tier 4 would be a full return to school, with a fully virtual option for those who want it.

The committee is scheduled to make a recommendation to the board Oct. 22 about what the second nine weeks of school should look like.

The School Board also will hear details about the SRO program. Several new requirements for SRO programs statewide took effect July 1, thanks to legislation passed earlier this year by the Virginia General Assembly.

They were created in part by Henrico Delegate Schuyler VanValkenburg (D-72nd District), who also teaches social studies at Glen Allen High School.

Among other actions, the new measures:

• establish the Virginia Center for School and Campus Safety and task 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;

• require localities to update their memorandums of understanding related to their SRO programs at least every two years;

• require 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.”

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

Henrico has 35 SROs – one at each middle school and at least one at each high school.

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Follow the Henrico Citizen on Twitter for updates from the School Board meeting, and visit HenricoCitizen.com later today for complete coverage.