ST. ALBANS — The debate about policing and race, locally and across the country, has made three contested races for the Maple Run Unified school board the most heavily discussed in Franklin County.
Two of the five candidates are members of Neighbors for a Safer St. Albans, a group that’s been critical of policing in St. Albans City. The group’s efforts led to the formation of a police advisory board for the city and of a committee to examine the role of school resource officers — police officers who work in the schools — in the Maple Run District.
Maple Run includes five schools and the communities of Fairfield, St. Albans City and St. Albans Town.
Three people are competing for two seats up for grabs representing St. Albans City; the top two vote-getters win the election. The candidates are Peter DesLauriers, a former St. Albans City mayor and a retired teacher in St. Albans City schools; Reier Erickson, a member of the Neighbors group who would be the first Black person on the board; and incumbent Nilda Gonnella-French, who has served on school boards in St. Albans for more than 20 years.
In St. Albans Town, Katie Messier (DesLauriers’ daughter) and Jennifer Williamson, another member of the Neighbors group, are competing for an open seat.
Voters in all three Maple Run communities vote in every school board race.
Erickson and Williamson have questioned the need for school resource officers, citing national studies showing that the in-school officers can have negative impacts on students with disabilities, poor students and students of color.
DesLauriers and Messier have taken the opposite position, arguing that officers can and do form positive relationships with students, including those who most need adult support.
School resource officers can deter violence, DesLauriers said, such as “active shooters, parents angry over custody issues, or in-school out-of-control kids who are a danger to themselves or others.”
“SROs should not be within the normal chain of discipline in the school,” he said. “The schools have teachers, administrators, behavior interventionists and counselors. SROs should never be involved in discipline issues.”
Gonella-French is the board member who proposed forming the SRO study committee and hiring an outside facilitator to manage it. “I am trying to be as objective as I can,” she said. The committee is expected to make a preliminary report soon after Town Meeting Day and a final recommendation at the end of the school year.
Bellows Free Academy in St. Albans has had a school resource officer since 2005, and Gonnella-French said there should be some local data for the committee to examine, as well as national data.
But it is not facts that have heated up the school board races.
At a Feb. 17 forum on Northwest Public Access television, DesLauriers said to Erickson, “It’s nice to meet you. I’d built up in my mind that you were a monster, but you’re a pretty decent guy.”
“At first, I didn’t think anything of it,” Erickson said of DesLauriers’ remark. “When you face a lot of microaggressions, you start blocking them out or not seeing them for what they are.”
The two had never spoken directly, not even on social media, but had attended the same public meetings at which they offered very different takes on policing.
Erickson said he could understand being seen as an inconvenient pest, but not as a monster.
“That’s a great example of implicit bias and how we sometimes view others through a lens of otherness,” he said.
Erickson had debated policing with Messier on a Facebook group. “I didn’t ever say anything nasty to his daughter,” said Erickson. He was, however, trying to explain his concerns about SROs.
Messier reportedly told Erickson that if he felt his family wasn’t safe here, he should move. It was that comment, he said, that spurred him to run for school board.
For Erickson, the national data makes it clear that in-school police make school less safe for certain groups of students. He said he understands that other parents believe having a police officer in the school makes their children safer, and that’s a difference in perspective that should be discussed.
“What we can’t do is decide one person doesn’t belong in the community because their idea of safety is different from mine,” he said.
Asked by email about his “monster” comment, DesLauriers responded, “I made the statement and looked for his reaction, and there was none. We had the entire interview together, and we talked friendly after, plenty of time to express displeasure or hurt. If he had, I would have apologized. I meant no disrespect. You should see that I ended that statement with ‘You are a pretty decent guy.’ That part seems to have slipped by.”
Gonnella-French declined to comment on DesLauriers’ remark. However, she supports implicit bias training for staff and board members. “We’re all learning that we have biases we never realized we had,” she said. “I’m learning I have more biases than I thought I had.”
Erickson said implicit bias training could be valuable on issues of poverty and class. “In St. Albans, we have the tracks and the infamous other side of the tracks,” he said.
Just as in his hometown in Minnesota, people in the St. Albans area are often labeled based simply on their last name, he said. “That kind of sways how teachers, administrators … see you.”
In Minnesota, the culture of Indigenous people is recognized and celebrated, Erickson said, and in Maple Run school he would like to see some celebration of Abenaki history and culture, as well as instruction about local abolitionists who sheltered people escaping slavery.
Asked what he would add to the curriculum, DesLauriers said, “some mindfulness, stress relief, public speaking and constitutional issues.”
He also supported proficiency-based education, which was controversial when it was introduced at BFA. “I agree with outcome-based instruction. … I also believe that it needs to be done right. I would talk with teachers, administrators, current students and, most importantly, former students who have had the experience of taking this modality out into the real world.
“The old rote learning has little or no value since any student with a phone can Google any fact. It is no longer what you know; it is what you can do with what you know,” he said.
Gonella-French said she believes the struggles around proficiency at BFA have been mostly resolved, and the next challenge is to bring consistent proficiency standards and methods of evaluation to the district’s three K-8 schools.
When asked why he has put so much time and energy into trying to explain the experience of Black people to his white neighbors, rather than saying they should educate themselves, Erickson said that work has to be done by people of color, members of the LGBTQ community and women.
“In the end, we’re the only ones who have this experience and can share it. I believe that we can make the world better,” Erickson said.
He also pointed to the racist threats and harassment that prompted Kiah Morris to resign as a Bennington state representative, saying, “Sometimes it can be incredibly scary.”
