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The Alexandria City School Board will receive the long-awaited revised agreement governing police in its schools Thursday night — the first time the renegotiated document will be publicly available — as the board convenes its first regular meeting since accepting Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt's resignation in March.
The draft 2026-28 Memorandum of Understanding between ACPS and the Alexandria Police Department is listed as a monitoring item on Thursday's agenda, meaning the board will review but not vote on it. The Governance Committee has approved the current version, which has also been cleared by the City Attorney's Office.
The most significant change from the 2025 draft that triggered community concern: the new agreement removes the designation of School Resource Officers as "school officials" under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. That designation, included in the state model MOU, would have allowed SROs to access student education records without written parental consent — for example, to maintain physical safety and security. Community members who spoke at a May 2025 public hearing objected strongly to the provision, and the School Board voted to extend the existing agreement twice rather than adopt the new version. The revised draft, presented on Thursday, strips the designation and its related language entirely.
Other changes in the 2026 draft include the removal of all references to the National Association of School Resource Officers, updated statutory citations, new City Attorney language clarifying how SROs may question students in non-emergency situations, and a correction of the review period language from "biannually" — which means every six months — to "biennially," which means every two years, consistent with state law.
The review process stretches back to June 2023, when the current MOU was adopted, and a joint City Council/School Board subcommittee was formed to develop recommendations. That group met five times through March 2024. Its recommendations were incorporated into a 2025 draft, but after the May 2025 public hearing surfaced concerns about student privacy, the board extended the agreement a first time and remanded the draft back to the Governance Committee. A second six-month extension followed in December 2025.
If adopted, the new MOU would take effect July 1, 2026, and run through June 30, 2028. It would be signed by Police Chief Tarrick McGuire and the superintendent on behalf of the School Board. The memo from Division Counsel Robert Falconi notes that a signed agreement — or another extension of the current one — must be in place by June 30, 2026.
A public hearing is scheduled for April 16 at 5 p.m. at 1340 Braddock Place. The sign-up deadline to speak is noon on April 15.
Thursday's meeting begins at 6 p.m. at 1340 Braddock Place and can be watched live on cable channel 71 or via Zoom. Questions can be directed to the Clerk of the Board at boardclerk@acps.k12.va.us or 703-619-8316.
