Henrico County assistant superintendent Nyah Hamlett (center) and Douglas S. Freeman High School Principal Andrew Mey (left) with students (Photo by Ash Daniel)
It was over several cups of hot coffee on a January morning in 2014 that then-Henrico Police Chief Douglas Middleton passionately presented plans to push the reset button on the way his officers interacted with students and parents in the county school system.
Middleton was meeting with John Vithoulkas, the deputy county manager, who sat across the table and shared the same concern over the souring relationships that had developed between the schools, the juvenile justice system, parents, and children.
The problem?
The school-based police made about 300 arrests a year in Henrico County before 2015. More than 95 percent of those arrests were initiated by a school administrator or educator, says Middleton, currently a police colonel and deputy manager for public safety for Henrico.
“Over time, I think the courts, the judges, and the school administration had the desire to have more police officers on school campuses because it simplified things,” Middleton says. “We never should have allowed the role of school resource officers to become that prominent in the school system.”
It was a time drain for police. Each arrest meant that an officer had to transport a student off site to be booked, and that could take up to six hours, leaving the school building vulnerable and the officers drained.
It was also putting the students at risk: Nyah Hamlett, Henrico County assistant superintendent for instructional support, says the trend had become a school-to-prison-pipeline issue.
Virginia’s pipeline was labeled among the worst in the country in 2015. Virginia students were referred to law enforcement at rates of nearly 16 per 1,000, compared to six per 1,000 nationwide, according to the Center for Public Integrity. African-American and special-needs kids were referred more often than others. Henrico’s zero-tolerance conduct code was part of the problem, Hamlett says.
As the police department amended its policies and procedures, the county developed a new conduct code. Both have also implemented training programs to better equip parents, administrators, teachers, and students with tools to redirect bad behaviors and keep children focused on graduation.
Middleton says they rethought and overhauled school arrest procedures, citing practices that put less emphasis on arrests in schools and placed more discretionary power in the officers’ hands. The goal now is to keep students and teachers safe instead of using police to discipline students.
During the first year of the new initiative, in-school arrests dropped from 300 per year to less than 10. The 10 arrests in 2015 were responses to warrants issued outside of school.
“It has become a lot less traumatic and dramatic for families,” Middleton says. “In my case, I’m a grandparent of four. I can sympathize with the parents and caretakers of these children who were constantly being called to the juvenile booking office.”
A new training program for officers has also helped reduce arrests and improve relationships with students and families. The Henrico County Police Department developed a certification program along with a required annual training for school officers and school administrators held before the start of every school year.
“We wanted to make sure we were not necessarily in the same book, because we do different things,” Hamlett says, “but we did want to make sure we were going in the same direction for students and children in our community.”
The new Henrico County Code of Conduct was crafted with a goal of reducing out-of-school suspensions and expulsions. For example, the new code includes age-appropriate consequences. Previously, students in elementary school were up against the same consequences as high school students, which led to increased expulsions for younger children. The new code also outlines a new section of behavior interventions and responses.
“Both students and staff have programs, tools and information that will prevent negative behavior,” Hamlett says.
Seven schools in the district are participating in a pilot project in which staff members take part in a Social Emotional Support Team that includes a full-time psychologist and full-time social worker. The participating schools include the Academy at Virginia Randolph, which serves children with behavioral and academic challenges. So far, the participating schools have shown a 58 percent drop in out-of-school suspension rates.
“Teachers don’t go to school to get a master’s degree in behavioral management,” Hamlett says. “So we need to give them the tools they need.”
Other pilot programs are being rolled out across Henrico schools, including adding a dean of students to the staff, mindfulness training for educators, and ongoing cultural competency programs. All of them are generating positive results, says Hamlett.
“If you look at a map of Henrico and highlight where most suspensions occurred last year, they are the areas where we aren’t yet implementing these programs,” Hamlett says.
As the school system secures more funding, more schools will be able to roll out the new initiatives in their buildings and reap the same benefits. Middleton and Hamlett are hopeful that some of these initiatives could become models for schools around the country to improve graduation rates.
