Mayor Miro Weinberger is asking the Burlington School District to review its school resource officer program, in a shift after Weinberger had expressed support for the program and funded it in his budget.Â
VTDigger reported Tuesday that outgoing Superintendent Yaw Obeng was not consulted on a letter with his name on it that expressed “unified support” for the school resource officer program. School Board Chair Clare Wool apologized for sending the letter at Tuesday’s board meeting.
Weinberger said during his Wednesday press update that the revelation about the authorship of the letter and additional calls from the public to end the program have led him to seek additional input. He is still asking the city council to fund the positions, but wants the district to review them before signing a new Memorandum of Understanding for the upcoming school year.
More than 1,000 people signed up for public forum at Monday’s city council meeting, which continued Tuesday and was set to resume at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. Speakers called in support of demands from the Racial Justice Alliance, which include removing officers from the city’s schools.
The unprecedented public forum has featured hundreds of speakers each night asking the city to reduce the number of uniformed officers by 30%, remove officers from schools and fire Officers Jason Bellavance, Cory Campbell and Joe Corrow, all of whom are named in police brutality lawsuits filed by African American men.
Weinberger has proposed a 10% cut to the department, including lowering the number of officers from the cap of 105 to 93, where it currently stands.
Even if the letter had accurately represented the district’s position, Weinberger said that the administration needed to have further conversations about the program with parents, activists and students, especially students of color.
Weinberger said that new superintendent Tom Flanagan, who starts July 1, should lead a process engaging stakeholders to evaluate the program. He said that he has spoken with Flanagan about undertaking a review, and Flanagan said he was comfortable doing so.
“We try to be a good partner to the school district, so if they come out of that review and still want to go forward with this program, and there has been good process behind it, I’m inclined to be supportive of the leadership of the school district, but I think they really have to do that work before I can feel comfortable signing an MOU and continuing that practice,” Weinberger said.
Weinberger said that his confidence in the school district’s position was shaken. He said that the city often defers to the wishes of the district, and its indication to him that it supported the program played a major role in his decision to back it.
“That’s got to be addressed by the district, what happened there,” he said. “We got an email in my office from Superintendent Obeng’s email address, from him, and a letter that he signed. That mattered to me, I have respect for Superintendent Obeng, and he so quickly and confidently wanted to support the letter.”
A group including the Vermont ACLU and Kiah Morris, policy director of Rights & Democracy, wrote a letter Tuesday to the school board opposing the SRO program.
“The placement of law enforcement officials in schools in recent decades in response to the war on drugs was disproportionately directed at people of color,” the letter states. “Unfortunately, the resulting School Resource Officer role that emerged over the years causes a pattern of harm to children.”
Students in schools with school resource officers are three times more likely to face arrest than students in schools without school resource officers, the letter states. Having officers in schools disportionately affects African American students, students on individualized education programs and LGTBQ youth, the letter states.
Former longtime school board member Liz Curry, parent Alison Segar and local attorneys Robert Appel and Susan Comerford also signed the letter.