Public school divisions around the state would be required to hire at least one school resource officer in every public elementary and secondary school, according to a measure that was submitted in the Virginia General Assembly this month.
Delegate Mark Earley, a Republican who represents portions of Chesterfield County and presented the bill in the House of Delegates last month, stated that “Our kids are our most precious resource. [Children] are what we care about the most, and you protect the things you care about, and you try to put them in the safest environment possible.”
“Enter into a collaborative agreement with the local law-enforcement agency to employ at least one school resource officer in each public elementary and secondary school in the local school division and provides that no school board shall be granted any full or partial waiver from such staffing requirements,” the bill’s summary states, if it is approved in its current form.
Lack of law enforcement and its effects on financing Staffing of School Resource Officers
The Hampton Roads area’s school divisions already have School Resource Officer programs in place, but they are unable to have a full-time SRO assigned to each school campus due to a lack of financing for their pay and a paucity of law enforcement personnel.
The bill explains that there is a “contingent effective date that states that the foregoing requirement shall become effective beginning with the fiscal year in which funding has been provided pursuant to the general appropriation act to fully fund such requirement,” even though it does not address the lack of law enforcement personnel.
“I think in some ways it is aspirational,” Earley stated. “We’re not going to force it to happen until, you know, [the state does] our part in funding it.”
Additional SRDs were distributed to Chesapeake schools by the Chesapeake Sheriff’s Office.
“To fully realize [the bill’s] potential, we encourage the Governor to amend the proposed budget to include funding for this initiative,” according to a statement from the Hampton City Schools division.
“We support having a trained police officer in all schools, funded by the state,” Virginia Beach City Schools Superintendent Dr. Donald Robertson stated.
Students from Chesapeake were greeted by new school resource officers upon their return.
In order to expand school resource officers (SROs), Governor Glenn Youngkin has advocated for increases in the state budget; nevertheless, these increases have not been sufficient to provide funding for an SRO on each and every public school site.
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The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, which is the state department that is responsible for maintaining data on SROs, reports that there are 1,074 individuals now working as SROs in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
There are 857 full-time teachers who are allocated to one school, 201 full-time teachers who are assigned to multiple schools, and 16 temporary teachers who are assigned to one or more schools. This information was provided by a DCJS Freedom of Information Act officer.
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According to the findings of a fiscal impact analysis conducted in 2022 for a proposal that was very identical to the one that failed to maintain the SRO mandate, there were less than 700 schools across the state that did not have coverage from the School Resource Officer.
