Alexandria City Public Schools saw a 40% reduction in the number of incidents requiring a police response during the first two quarters of this school year compared to last year, according to a school safety report recently presented to the Alexandria City School Board.
During the first semester this year, ACPS reported 167 total incidents requiring a police response across the school system and 27 student referrals or arrests. The recent incident count represents a 40% drop from the first semester last school year, which saw 279 reported incidents.
“Overall, this reflects a broad downward shift in incident, volume and suggests that our prevention and intervention efforts are having a measurable impact,” Lee Conroy, the ACPS director of safety and security services, told the School Board. “Across all school levels, we’re seeing incident totals trending downwards … Taken together, that represents a meaningful improvement across the system, and may point to increasing stability division wide in future.”
Among the report, the number of fights/assaults fell to 42 in the first two quarters of this school year, down from 82 for the same period last school year; threats involving verbal, cyber and social media dropped significantly from 22 to six incidents, marking a 73% reduction, and reports of missing students dropped from 21 to 11.
Conroy said the pattern suggests less escalation among situations in the school system.
“It is a combined team effort, not only of our Alexandria Police Department partners, but our fire department has been in the schools, not just on calls for service, but showing their colors and building those relationships with our students,” Conroy said. “Our administrators, our teachers, our security staff, central office staff, my staff — nobody’s on the sidelines anymore. We are making sure that we are getting out and engaging with our students engaging with our community members, letting them know that we are here to support them.”
School Board member Tim Beaty said, “The issue of safety in our schools seems to be improving day by day in our schools … My great hope based upon this data, is that our kids are feeling safer in the schools, and I have every reason to think they are.”
Alexandria City High School accounted for 20 arrests and court referrals during the first and second quarters, while middle schools accounted for seven. No elementary or K-8 students were arrested or referred to court during this period.
The arrest and referral categories included alcohol possession, assault and battery, controlled substances, weapon possession, swatting, assault by mob, drunk in public, petit larceny, trespassing and warrant service.
Conroy said the school system will focus on more targeted efforts at the beginning of the next school year.
“Understanding that these trends, that there’s an initial spike at the beginning of the year, we are going to have more targeted enforcement and much more visibility,” he said. “Making sure that our offer officers are out, moving. They’re visible. They’re engaging with students, they’re being present, they’re being aware.”
