MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. — Opponents of a plan to add Community Engagement Officers (CEOs) to Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) gathered in Rockville Sunday, calling for change. The activists raised concerns about the plan's impact on students, particularly Black children.
MCPS Superintendent Dr. Monifa McKnight discussed the plan in February and said CEOs would be assigned to specific workstations inside schools while also having a direct line of communication with school leadership.
The call to improve security at Montgomery County schools came in January after a student was shot by another student inside a bathroom at Col. Zadock Magruder High School in Derwood.
According to data presented at a MCPS Board of Education meeting in late February, the district has seen an increase in cases of students bringing weapons to schools compared to the 2019 and 2020 school years.
An MCPS spokesperson also said the district has seen an increase in physical violence since the return to in-person learning.
However, on Sunday, opponents of the plan to add CEOs to schools met outside the Carver Educational Services Center and Board of Education building in Rockville.
Speakers at the event spoke about harmful impacts having police officers regularly in the school hallways has on Black student.
"I will not allow my son to be in schools with police," Tiffany Kelly, a mother of a 12-year-old Montgomery County student said. "We need centers in our schools that address the mental wellbeing of our children. Once they are whole then they will learn.”
Instead of having armed guards inside of schools, opponents of the CEO plan said more mental health resources should be made available to students.
"We need more health care professionals in the schools," said one speaker. "Instead of having the police in school, let’s have the psychologists, let’s have the social workers.”
WUSA9 reached out to MCPS for comment on the CEO plan on Sunday but did not receive a response.
During an interview late last month, Dr. McKnight said there were benefits to the SRO program but also drawbacks, as is the case with any program in the school system.
After making amendments to the plan to allow for CEOs to connect more frequently with school principals, she said a big focus would be on the relationships between CEOs and students.
"Another big component of the change in the program is being intentional about how those CEOs are building relationships into that and establishment of programs with our students in a very proactive manner, like the DARE program," explained McKnight. "And starting with our students and not just interacting with them to manage environments in the secondary schools, but establishing that relationship with elementary, middle, and high. We found success in the school system in having that interaction, that involvement through those programs."
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