Burlington residents called for the removal of officers from Burlington’s schools during a school board committee meeting Tuesday.
About a dozen residents, including a handful of students and recent graduates of Burlington schools, spoke in favor of removing the school resource officers (SROs), arguing that having armed officers in the schools was traumatic for students, especially students of color.
The board’s diversity, equity and inclusion committee met Tuesday evening to discuss the school resource officer program and listen to feedback in a videoconferenced public forum.
Mayor Miro Weinberger has asked the district and incoming Superintendent Tom Flanagan to review the SRO program before the start of the next academic year.
The Vermont Racial Justice Alliance has called for the removal of officers from schools, alongside demands for a 30% reduction in uniformed officers and a reinvestment in programs that uplift communities of color.
Flanagan attended Tuesday’s meeting, as did many school board members, district officials and a few city councilors.
“I think it’s a very important conversation for us to have as a community, and I’m interested to see where the community stands,” Flanagan said.
Khadija Bangoura, a 2017 graduate of Burlington High School, said that she experienced and witnessed unfair policing of Black and brown students.
“This policing is a culture that makes the learning environment unsafe and inequitable for students of color,” she said.
Bangoura said that all children should be able to feel safe in their schools.
“By standing behind school resource officers, you are ignoring the direction of the movement of this country, you are ignoring the trauma that lives in young people’s bodies,” she said. “You are upholding white supremacy by putting white students’ needs above the Black and brown students.”
Student Mohamed Abdi said that while he thinks there should be security in schools, officers should not be armed.
“I feel like that is a little too much for the students to see a person with a gun inside the school at such a young age is probably not a good thing,” he said.
Alison Segar, a parent of three students of color who graduated from the district who is a social worker, said that armed police in the schools have been detrimental to both her own children and children she has worked with.
“I believe armed police in our schools have not promoted positive relationships between students, particularly students of color, and the police, and neither their parents as well,” she said. “It has been unhelpful at best and traumatizing at its worst.”
Henri Sparks, the district’s director of equity, said that the district currently has two SROs, one at the high school and one at the middle schools. He said that he stood behind the program but believed it was a good time to have a broader community conversation about it.
“The SROs are not involved in any truancy issues, they do not arrest students on school grounds, they are not putting hands on students,” he said. “As we laid out in the memorandum of understanding, we really wanted to be as proactive as possible by creating more of a social opportunity for the SROs to get to know students, get to know faculty and staff.”
School commissioners who weighed in Tuesday widely expressed support for removing the officers from the schools.
Commissioner Kendra Sowers said that she wanted to find alternatives to the SRO program.
“I do have strong feelings that we shouldn’t have armed guards and police in our schools,” she said. “I want to know exactly how we can replace them with community intervention counselors or justice officers.”
School Commissioner Kathy Olwell also said she did not support the school resource officer program.
“As a social worker, I just don’t think we need to have our policemen in schools,” she said. “But I will continue to listen.”
A letter from the Burlington School District to Mayor Miro Weinberger sent on June 10 expressed support for the program, but a dispute ensued after outgoing Superintendent Yaw Obeng said that he had not signed off on the letter.
School Board Chair Clare Wool subsequently apologized for signing the letter — which she said was “collaboratively drafted” by the district employees who signed it — on behalf of the board. She said that Obeng had received and viewed the Google document with the draft letter, and had thanked the staff for drafting it.
Wool apologized again Tuesday for not looping in the board. She said she was dedicated to taking input from the board.
The full school board is scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss the issue more in depth.
