CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Last week, Charlottesville Police Chief Michael Kochis met with a parent who opposes the city’s plan to return uniformed officers to the school system. It’s one of many face-to-face conversations Kochis said he’s engaged in as the city moves forward with plans to implement its school resource officer program, despite a new call for another School Board vote on the matter.

“There’s two sides to this issue,” Kochis said this week during an appearance on the Schilling Show. “There’s one side that’s obviously very much against SROs, and there’s another side that are very much for SROs in schools. I hear from both. I really do. And I think what’s important is that you have to respect the opinions of both. What they both have in common is, they want the best for our children in our school.

The Charlottesville School Board voted 4-2 in March 2025 to bring SROs back into the schools, one at the high school and one at the middle school. Since then, a working group with members representing the schools, the community and the police crafted a memorandum of understanding outlining how the program would work.

A petition has called for a new vote on the issue, since there is one new board member elected in November. The School Board is scheduled to hold an April 16 work session specifically on this topic.

City schools spokesperson Amanda Korman Simalchik told Cville Right Now there are no scheduled votes regarding the SRO program on the board’s agenda.

“There’s really strong feelings on both sides,” said Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania, who joined Kochis on the Schilling Show. “It’s a very engaged community. It’s a community that has very high expectations related to transparency and conversations.”

In the meantime, the process of hiring the two SROs continues.

Kochis said this week that two candidates have been identified for those positions and are currently being vetted by a pair of panels made up of representatives from the community, the school system and law enforcement.

“It really is about having a robust, thorough conversation, not just from one perspective,” Kochis said. “If it’s just cops on there it’s, ‘OK. We know they know how to do police work.'”

Kochis and Platania said the program isn’t about policing the schools and making arrests.

“We have no interest in criminalizing school behavior issues and pulling them into the criminal justice system and juvenile court,” Platania said. “We just don’t.”

Kochis and Platania said having the right officers in schools, cultivating healthy relationships with city students, can help head off serious incidents before they occur.

“Really, if it’s the right personality and they have relationships with the kids, and can talk to the kids, they can maybe solve stuff on the front end,” Platania said. “Identify beefs and start to diffuse it or get it referred over to the restorative justice programs that are in our schools. This is not about starting to police and arrest and prosecute. That’s a win for nobody. We really want everybody to be and feel safe in the schools.”

Charlottesville removed officers from its schools in 2020, then voted to bring them back last year.