correction

       A previous version of this article incorrectly described the composition of the School Law Enforcement Partnership Advisory Group as half school staffers and half community members. The SLEP will be composed of seven Alexandria City Public Schools staff members and nine non-staff members. The article has been corrected.

       The Alexandria City School Board gave approval Thursday for top school administrators to create an advisory group to review and propose changes to the district’s partnership with police.

       Formation of the School Law Enforcement Partnership Advisory Group (SLEP) was delayed after a tense meeting last month in which board members could not reach a consensus about the group’s makeup.

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       Board members argued, among other things, that there needed to be a different plan that would give the board more oversight into the advisory group’s work.

       The revised plan presented Thursday appeared to respond to the school board’s previous feedback. Thirteen revisions were added, which included restructuring the advisory group by adding four additional members and defining those roles. It also clarified the school board’s role in the process — board members will vote on whether the SLEP’s issued recommendations should be approved, thus signaling to the district’s superintendent whether to move forward on any policy changes.

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       “All of the recommendations are in this proposal,” said Jacinta Greene, the school board’s vice chair. “And I went down my checklist, so I know they are all in there.”

       With the board’s consensus, the advisory group’s first meeting is slated to take place in May or June, after an outside facilitator, who has yet to be named, is approved. Applications for the group opened Friday, with a deadline of May 2. Initial feedback and recommendations by the group will be given to the superintendent in December.

       Alexandria School Board fails to reach decision on forming advisory group to review school policing

       Some board members were concerned about the short turnaround for people to get involved, since applications are due in less than two weeks. Top administrators said the academic year was close to ending, putting them on a shorter timeline to get the group established. But because the topic has been so controversial within the school system, they said they were confident students, staffers and community members will be quick to apply.

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       “Let’s get things moving while we have the momentum, and that really is the sense of urgency that we have,” Superintendent Gregory C. Hutchings Jr. said. “We wanted to get this started in January, so we’re already kind of past that time frame.”

       The group will be composed of seven school staffers and nine nonstaff members ― including two parents, two students, a community representative, a police department representative and a representative from the city.

       The district has debated its relationship with police since 2020, amid widespread national discussion on whether school systems should have school resource officers in the buildings. It reached an agreement with the police department that year, clarifying student rights and requiring the school system to begin publishing data on discipline and policing of students categorized by race, sex, age and disability.

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       The SROs, who are not involved in disciplinary matters, take action against a student only when the student is thought to be engaged in criminal activity, such as threatening peers with a weapon or having drugs or alcohol at school. In the 2019-2020 school year, Alexandria’s five SROs made six arrests.

       Alexandria is removing police from its schools. Some students don’t want them to go.

       In May 2021, the Alexandria City Council voted to stop funding the SRO program. The school system began the academic year without SROs — until early October, when Alexandria City High School went into lockdown because a male student had a firearm at school. The lockdown followed a run of incidents in which police were called to the school over fights.

       About a week after the lockdown, the city council decided to return police to schools.

       In December, two SROs at Alexandria City High School were placed on leave involving an investigation. The Washington Post reported it stemmed from a report by a former student about alleged sexually inappropriate conversations that occurred during her time at the school.

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       No SROs are serving at the high school, but police patrol outside. The board has since requested funding from the city government to extend the SRO program until June 2023.

       Data released in March showed that Black students in the school district were disproportionately arrested compared with their White peers. Black males were arrested at especially high rates, making up 44 percent of middle school arrests and 36 percent of high school arrests.

       The revised advisory board structure puts representatives in place to tackle some of those issues. The four added positions will include a member who has experience in Black male achievement and a member with experience in criminal justice reform.

       Some board members inquired whether the advisory group would consider what policing model to use in schools — such as whether officers should be present in the hallways or be on standby outside the schools. Hutchings halted that discussion, urging school board members to resist sharing any opinions on their positions. He said that members of the advisory group could remember school board members’ viewpoints and potentially be swayed by them.

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       “People will look back at this meeting and think that’s the path we want to go, without having the open mind of saying, ‘Let’s look at all of our data and determine what’s going to be the best based on the information we have,’” Hutchings said.

       Meagan Alderton, the board chair, noted that the board would still be able to provide feedback throughout the process.

       “We do what we always do — we ask the questions, make the necessary adjustments,” Alderton said. “I think we can make this work.”

       On Friday, some city council members expressed concern about the advisory group.

       City Councilman John Taylor Chapman (D), a key swing vote to restore the SROs last fall, said he would not be surprised if the advisory group ends up keeping SROs in city schools. He has advocated for Alexandria to adopt a “school safety coach” model used by the Charlottesville district.

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       “I don’t think many folks in our community have been in a space to look at how we keep people safe without officers,” he said in an interview Friday. “We haven’t had those general community conversations for people to be familiar with some of these alternate models. I don’t think we’re there yet.”

       Chapman, who works for the Fairfax County school district, added that because city council is ultimately funding the SRO program through the police budget, he and other city lawmakers should have been given more of a say in designing the advisory group.

       In the city council’s budget process, Mayor Justin Wilson (D) has proposed restoring the nearly $800,000 that funds the five SRO positions around Alexandria public schools in the police’s patrol staffing budget, though police can ultimately shift the funding for another purpose. He said he expects that the measure will pass next week.

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       City Councilman Canek Aguirre (D), one of the most vocal proponents of removing SROs from Alexandria schools, said that with so few student members, the SLEP would not be demographically representative of the city or its public school student body.

       “If we’re going to be talking about real inclusive engagement, there needs to be demographic representation,” he said. “This group doesn’t do that.”

       He also fears that the process, including possible closed focus groups, will not include the same level of transparency as a more public-facing engagement system, like the one adopted by nearby Arlington Public Schools when that system opted to review its SRO program.

       That sentiment was echoed by Sindy Carballo, a youth organizer for the activist group Tenants and Workers United and a recent ACHS graduate.

       “More voices were incorporated into the group, but there’s still only two student voices and it’s definitely not enough,” she said. “There’s no real input from the community. It’s very much driven by the superintendent and his staff.”

       Teo Armus contributed to this report.