For the first time in 19 years, students at Montgomery County public high schools will not see police officers stationed in their school hallways on Monday when classes begin, the result of a vigorous, years-long debate over racial equity and student safety in Maryland’s largest school system.
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Instead, groups of police called “community engagement officers” will be patrolling the areas around schools, said James N. D’Andrea, chief of staff to the superintendent, in a board of education meeting Tuesday. The officers may be told by the department’s central dispatch system to respond to incidents on campus when necessary, but they will not be in direct communication with school officials, he added.
“The biggest change is .？.？. that schools will not directly contact the engagement officers as they did in the past,” D’Andrea said. “All calls for service will go to 911 or non-emergency services.”
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Montgomery started assigning officers to high schools in 2002, using a federal grant for school security that was introduced after the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. The number of school resource officers ebbed and flowed based on budget changes, but stood at 25 in early 2020, with a program cost of about $3 million.
Early last year, Montgomery activists pushed back on a proposal to expand the program, citing data showing that Black and Latino students and students with disabilities were disproportionately arrested and disciplined by police in schools. Following nationwide protests against police misconduct and racial profiling, Montgomery became one of several counties in the D.C. region to pull police from public schools. Alexandria ended its school resource officer program in May; Arlington followed suit in June.
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In Montgomery, the decision by County Executive Marc Elrich (D) to remove officers from school hallways was celebrated as a victory by activists and liberal lawmakers, though debate quickly ensued over how officials would ensure the safety of students without having officers on campus, and how to fulfill other demands from students, such as expanded mental health resources.
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Members of the Elrich administration initially said the county would transition to a “community resource officer” program, with police stationed in the neighborhoods around school clusters instead of on school grounds and communicating directly with school administrators. Officials said this system would allow the county to stay in line with Maryland state law, which requires “adequate law enforcement coverage at all schools.”
But student activists pushed back on the proposal, saying in April that it was a “repurposing” of the original school resource officer program.
“This is not removing police from schools,” wrote a coalition of organizations focused on criminal justice. “It is just moving them outside the buildings — and, in the case of elementary and middle schools, adding new police presence where there was none before.”
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Montgomery officials convened two task forces to study the issue and make recommendations for alternatives. But over the summer, as news of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus dominated discussions of school reopening, details of how the county planned to fulfill its vow of “police-free schools” remained scarce.
“It truly has been so confusing for everyone involved in this work,” said Kyson Taylor, 17, a student activist who co-chairs one of the two task forces.
His group, the Student Wellbeing Action Group, released a preliminary report in mid-July asking the county to bar police from being stationed “inside, outside, or immediately around schools” and assign mental health professionals to each school, among other recommendations. He and other activists hadn’t heard back on the report from the school system or county government as of this week, Taylor said, and weren’t sure what to expect when they returned to campus for the first time after a year of virtual learning.
“Students still very much care about this issue,” said Taylor, a rising senior at Richard Montgomery High School. “It’s not like it’s an extracurricular activity or a hobby.”
D’Andrea said details of the new community engagement officer program had only recently been confirmed. Minor changes to the memorandum of understanding between the school system and the police department would be announced later this week. A more “comprehensive review” of the agreement, which will establish when school officials should call police, will start in September, he added.
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“Our plans are still being finalized,” a spokeswoman for the police department said in a statement.
Montgomery County Public Schools interim superintendent Monifa McKnight said Wednesday that the county plans to use part of the $112 million that it received from the American Rescue Plan to hire 50 new social workers who could be deployed to schools as early as this fall. The proposal is currently pending approval by the state, she said.
County Council member Will Jawando (D-At Large), an early advocate of removing police from schools, urged student activists to be patient as county leaders implement changes. He and other lawmakers plan to update the county’s operating budget this fall to add funding for social workers and counselors at schools, he said.
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“These systems have been built up over time and it’s a large school system,” Jawando said. “It takes time to get everything in order that are ultimately going to be sustainable. And we want that — sustainable change.”
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