Would Arlington students and staff be safer if the county school system returned to having resource officers from the county police department in its halls?
The final tally among the four contenders for two open School Board seats: One yes, three no.
“I don’t think we need to have resource officers back,” said Zuraya Tapia-Hadley, who with her three fellow contenders squared off in an Oct. 10 candidate forum sponsored by Arlington Parents for Education.
It was one of the first topics covered in the 90-minute forum. Washington Post education reporter Karina Elwood, who moderated, noted that Arlington was an outlier in removing school-resource officers (SROs) from schools.
Tapia-Hadley, Kathleen Clark and Paul Weiss came at the question from different angles, but all opposed resuming the program. James “Vell” Rives IV, however, did want to see police resource officers back.
“Our school climate … is not as good as it was when we had SROs,” particularly at the middle-school and high-school levels, he said.
Rives said the School Board had eliminated the policing effort in 2021 despite its own surveys showing students and parents felt safer in school with them in place.
“A majority of every single group reported feeling safer,” he said.
Weiss countered that, on balance, there is no need for the SRO program when alternatives are available.
“Schools are the safest place for our students,” he said, pushing for police to be involved with students in other ways.
School leaders do have post-SRO agreements in place with police, but with the SRO program dismantled, it likely would take 18 months to two years to rebuild it, assuming school leaders decided to go that direction.
The four School Board aspirants are seeking to fill the seats currently held by Cristina Diaz-Torres and David Priddy. First elected in 2020, each opted against running for a second four-year term.
Tapia-Hadley and Clark are the Democratic endorsees for the positions, giving them a leg up on Nov. 5. It’s been 21 years years since a candidate won a School Board seat in Arlington without first garnering the Democratic endorsement.
The full Arlington Parents for Education candidate forum has been posted online.
Candidates Largely in Agreement on Technology Use Among Younger Students: The four School Board contenders seem unanimous in their wariness over the amount of time younger students are spending looking at electronic devices as part of the instructional day.
“I want students to be competent with technology, but not dependent on it,” said Rives. “We’re using too much … particularly in elementary school.”
The appropriate level of technology was the first question at the forum. Rives and the three others on the ballot each expressed reservations the amount of tech being thrown at students by the school system at a young age.
“We should only be using technology to further instructional goals, not the other way around,” said Tapia-Hadley. “In elementary school, generally, I am opposed to tablets.”
“I do not think we should be using individual iPads [in classrooms]. There is absolutely no reason,” said Weiss.
Clark said there was not enough pen-and-paper classwork being done, particularly in elementary and middle schools. And in a concern raised by many about the school system on a variety of issues, she voiced concern about individual schools determining how to approach the matter.
“I would like to see some consistency,” she said. “The usage varies by school, and even by classroom.”
One challenge for those wishing to delay using tablets and other electronic devices at early ages is that the Virginia Department of Education conducts its annual standardized testing using them, several candidates noted. Students who don’t know the basics of devices are at a disadvantage on those tests, several candidates said.
Tapia-Hadley suggested state leaders need to rethink their approach.
“Why is that the policy? Nobody has been able to explain it to me,” she said.
Despite concerns about the impact of technology on learning and social development, the genie is out of the bottle, candidates seemed to acknowledge.
“Technology is not going away,” said Clark.
