Gaithersburg and Rockville Councilmembers Hernández and Van Grack Release Joint Statement Supporting Return of School Resource Officers in Montgomery County

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. — Yamil Hernández and Adam Van Grack today released a formal joint statement calling for Montgomery County to reinstate a modernized School Resource Officer (“SRO”) program focused on prevention, accountability, and trusted relationships within school communities.

The Councilmembers stated that recent incidents at schools across Montgomery County, including the February 9 shooting at Thomas S. Wootton High School (which includes students from both Rockville and Gaithersburg), demonstrate the need to reassess the County’s current school safety framework and move toward a stronger preventative model with dedicated officers embedded within school communities.

The joint statement emphasizes that school safety “requires trust, accountability, and a continuous presence,” while also calling for rigorous officer training, clear accountability standards, transparent oversight, and a prohibition on officers handling routine student discipline matters.

The full statement is below.

JOINT STATEMENT: SCHOOL SAFETY REQUIRES TRUST, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND A CONTINUOUS PRESENCE

Recent incidents at Wootton, Blake, Bradley Hills, Magruder, and Walter Johnson give us reason for alarm as well as sober review. On February 9th, before shots were fired at Wootton High School, there was a warning sign: the charging documents state that a student was threatened with a gun by the shooter in the hallway. While no policy can prevent every tragedy, we have a responsibility to ask whether a better system could have prevented the Wootton shootings.

As elected leaders representing the two largest municipalities in Montgomery County, we support a change. Wootton students are from both Rockville and Gaithersburg, and Adam’s son was in one of the barricaded classrooms that day. No one should have to live through that. Is our current school safety model doing what it needs to do? We don’t believe so.

It’s time to bring back School Resource Officers (SROs).

A dedicated, school-based, trusted officer changes the equation. Students are more likely to report threats to someone they know. Staff have a direct partner on-site. And when intervention is needed, it can happen immediately...not minutes later.

Five years ago, Montgomery County ended its SRO program and replaced it with the current Community Engagement Officer (CEO) model. That change was made in response to concerns about over-policing and the role of police in schools. Those concerns deserved to be heard then, and they deserve to be part of the conversation now. But after several years of experience, we must ask whether the CEO model gives our community the safety they

need.

The shortcomings of the CEO model are structural. CEOs are assigned across multiple campuses and aren’t embedded in one school community in the same way a dedicated SRO would be. That makes it harder to build daily relationships with students and staff. And when something happens, they may not already be on-site.

School safety isn’t just about how quickly someone responds after a crisis begins. It’s about whether a trusted professional is present before the crisis... someone students know, someone they trust, someone they will talk to when something feels wrong.

The CEO model asks officers to build trust, understand school culture, and respond quickly, but often without regular access to a single high school community. That’s a difficult assignment. CEOs can’t be everywhere, and they can’t easily replicate the relationships built through daily and continuous presence. This isn’t a criticism of the officers serving in these roles. It’s a recognition of the limits of the current model which can often push officers into an outside-of-the-school reactive role. An SRO model allows officers to be morepreventative.

Further, multiple goals can be achieved simultaneously. Police work is an honorable and noble profession. It is public service in one of its hardest forms. We should encourage young people to see public safety as a meaningful career path, especially in departments that are community-oriented, diverse, and reflective of the people they serve. We also know that some disagree regarding stronger integration of police officers in schools. However, this issue shouldn’t be a Faustian choice between counselors and police officers, or between safety and equity. We are capable of doing all of these things together. Students need mental health support. They need strong educators. And when serious threats arise, they also need a trained, sworn officer on-site, someone who is already part of the school community, already trusted, and already prepared to act.

In both Gaithersburg and Rockville, we know of incredible, trusting relationships that have developed between our city’s officers and students. We truly want everyone to feel safe and secure, especially students in school. So bring back SROs. But do it the right way. A modern SRO program must include rigorous selection standards, specialized training, and clear accountability. Officers should have no role in student discipline. There must be transparent reporting, meaningful student and parent feedback, and a clear process to remove officers who are not the right fit.

We have a shared obligation to build a better system. Additionally, officers in Gaithersburg and Rockville should play a meaningful part in any new SRO model. They are already important to the fabric of our school communities, know many of the students, and understand that trust is the foundation of effective policing.

Montgomery County can do better. We can build a new model that keeps students safe, treats them fairly, supports educators, and brings police into the school community as accountable, trusted partners. We’re ready to do our part. We call on MCPS, the Board of Education, the County Executive, the County Council, and our law enforcement partners to move this conversation from debate to design, and from design to deployment.