“Did you hear that? Are you safe? I love you.”
After hearing a gunshot echo through the hallway near her classroom at Thomas S. Wootton High School, Cameron Stokes immediately texted her brother as the school entered lockdown. For hours on end, students sat in dark classrooms, calling their parents and waiting for updates as heavily-armed officers stormed through their learning space.
In the last few months, conversations about school safety in MCPS have transformed from occasional policy discussions to increasingly urgent daily concerns. Threats of violence directed at Walt Whitman High School and Bradley Hills Elementary School, paired with a recent February shooting at Thomas S. Wootton High School, have left students, parents and administrators asking for change.
As concerns about school safety continue to grow, some have pointed to School Resource Officers (SROs) as a potential solution. SROs served at MCPS schools for 19 years, until 2021, when the county created a replacement. After years of criticism and student activism over racial disparities in discipline and student arrests, the county transitioned to Community Engagement Officers (CEOs).
SROs were armed police officers assigned to patrol specific MCPS high schools as well as certain elementary and middle schools within their school buildings. CEOs are still armed police officers, but are assigned to a cluster of schools and do not patrol hallways, instead remaining outside of the school buildings and monitoring the cluster. They do not respond to school incidents except for police-related incidents or upon direct request from a principal — instead, the county aims to have CEOs “enhance the relationship and level of community engagement with the elementary and middle school communities.” As MCPS once again faces pressure to strengthen school security, bringing back SROs should not be considered a viable option as it would reinstate a system that has already failed.
The most significant issue with reinstating SROs is the racial disparities in discipline and arrests that developed under the program. 738 MCPS students were arrested from the beginning of the 2016-17 school year to the end of the 2018-19 school year. Of those students, about 48% were Black, despite making up only 21.4% of the total county enrollment. More importantly, while there’s no evidence that these disparities are the result of actual differences in student behavior, a Montgomery County Government Report found that Black children remain twice as likely to get suspended or referred to juvenile services. Instead, the report points to structural inequities and the historic criminalization of students of color as key drivers of racial disparities in school discipline.
Since the transition away from SROs, overall student arrests in MCPS schools have declined, although racial disparities in arrests still exist. A 2025 MCPS safety and security report found that students of color, particularly Black boys, continued to be arrested at disproportionately higher rates than their white peers, even as the total number of student arrests decreased compared to previous years under the SRO program.
While public discourse often treats school safety as something that must involve an armed presence, much of what keeps schools safe on a day-to-day basis is what happens before threats escalate. Jewel Sanders, a director at the Office of School Support and Well-Being for the Whitman and Paint Branch clusters, said that having trusted adults present in the building is extremely important.
“Relationships matter,” Sanders said. “You’re more likely to get someone to tell you what’s going on so that you can be proactive instead of something happening, and then being reactive.”
Effective school safety depends not only on emergency responses but also on students trusting adults enough to report concerns before situations escalate. Calls to reinstate SROs ignore the fact that police visibility may provide reassurance to some, but doesn’t necessarily foster the openness and trust needed just to prevent threats of harm.
Sanders says that equity-driven approaches that embed students’ cultural backgrounds, languages and lived experiences into daily lessons are the key techniques MCPS should use to approach this issue.
“When we talk about culturally responsive instruction, it has different levels,” Sanders said. “It could be about race, it could be about gender, it could be about ways that I need to see myself and that I need for you to engage with me.”
Sanders described school safety as a nuanced topic requiring a combination of support systems, relationship-building and preemptive intervention. She said that threats of violence rarely emerge because schools lack police; instead, they arise from larger issues such as untreated mental health struggles, unresolved peer conflict, social isolation and a lack of trusted adults. Police are designed to react after escalation. School safety, however, depends on preventing escalation from happening in the first place.
Following recent threats across MCPS, support for a stronger police presence is understandable. Fear naturally creates a desire for immediate and visible protection. However, some school officials argue that visible security measures can provide reassurance even if they do not address the deeper causes of school violence. Whitman security team leader Clarence Dove said when major incidents occur, the school makes adjustments that may include increased security measures, though there has only been community discussion about one measure, reinstating SROs.
“I believe that when the staff, students and communities see more police presence, there is another level of comfort felt,” Dove said.
Nevertheless, expanding police presence within schools still risks overcriminalizing students of color if the approach remains surveillance-based. Although the CEO system reduced the role of police inside school buildings, students still face punishment and the same feelings of mistrust. One Whitman student said that repeated disciplinary experiences in middle school left her feeling isolated and unheard within the school system.
“Students just need to be heard,” she said. “School should be a safe space, not just physically but also mentally.”
Additionally, Montgomery County’s own oversight findings suggest that increasing police-centered discipline in schools would come at the cost of deep racial inequity in who gets penalized, removed and criminalized. Rather than returning to a model heavily tied to racial disproportionality, MCPS should follow recommendations from county oversight officials.
The Montgomery County Office of Legislative Oversight instead recommends that MCPS work directly with people of color to develop a systemwide plan aimed at reducing the overrepresentation of Black students in discipline and arrests. The report also pushes for community partnerships and targeted support over police-centered responses as they are more effective at addressing racial disparities. In order to build safety policies in collaboration with racial minorities and reduce their overrepresentation in arrests and discipline, it is crucial to avoid making long-term decisions over short-term issues.
Sanders said cultural misunderstandings and biases can shape how schools perceive and ultimately discipline students.
“Someone might look at that as being disorderly. Is that — or is that cultural?” Sanders said. “What might not be your norm doesn’t make it wrong.”
If MCPS wants safer schools, it does not need to build an entirely new framework, but rather fully invest in the one it’s already identified as more preventative. MCPS should lean into restorative approaches that already exist through coaches, mental health specialists and school psychologists designed to help students regulate emotions, repair emotional conflict and reconnect after harm occurs. Expanding these systems through increased funding, stronger enforcement and greater visibility would target violence earlier than police presence ever could.
In a county shaken by recent violence, the desire for immediate solutions is logical. However, turning back the clock and reinstating problematic systems would revert schools into spaces of routine police surveillance. Students deserve schools where safety is measured by feeling secure enough to learn, not by the over-policing of their school buildings.
