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The Alexandria City School Board will hold a public hearing next month on its Memorandum of Understanding with the Alexandria Police Department, the agreement that governs the role of police in Alexandria's public schools, officials announced Friday.
The hearing is scheduled for Thursday, April 16, at 5 p.m. in the School Board Meeting Room at 1340 Braddock Place. Community members who wish to speak must sign up by noon on Wednesday, April 15. Written comments may also be submitted using an online form posted to the ACPS website. The board is expected to vote on final approval at its April 23 meeting.
The draft MOU will be posted publicly when it appears on the April 9 school board meeting agenda — the same night as City Council's add-delete budget deadline — giving the community roughly a week to review proposed changes before the hearing.
The MOU governs the conduct of School Resource Officers stationed at Alexandria City High School and the city's middle schools, outlining procedures for information sharing, investigations, questioning of students, searches, arrests and physical interventions. The agreement requires board review and approval every two years.
The hearing marks the end of a review process that has stretched nearly a year. The original 2023 agreement expired June 30, 2025, but the board approved a six-month extension rather than finalize a new version after a contentious debate over a proposed provision that would have granted SROs direct access to student records. The Alexandria Police Department ultimately withdrew that request. The board approved a second extension in December 2025, pushing the current agreement through June 30, 2026, while the Governance Committee and School Law Enforcement Partnership advisory group completed their review.
The extended deliberations came amid broader community concerns. At the May 2025 public hearing, speakers raised issues about student privacy, access to educational records, and procedures for questioning students on campus. A June 2025 City Council session on the MOU also drew sharp questions from members about the information-sharing provisions, with Councilman Canek Aguirre describing the process as "a little hurried" and calling on the school board to extend the timeline for additional discussion.
A first-semester school safety report presented to the board in February showed significant improvement across most incident categories during the 2025-26 school year, with fights and assaults down nearly 50% compared to the same period last year.
The board's Governance Committee is also scheduled to take up the MOU at its April 17 meeting — one day after the public hearing — according to a report delivered Thursday night by board member Abdulahi Abdalla. It is unclear whether the committee's review will inform the board's expected April 23 vote or follow it.
This story will be updated when the draft MOU is published.
