The American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont and Vermont Legal Aid say a small number of schools have been unlawfully using certain federal dollars to pay for police in schools.
In a letter sent Wednesday to the Agency of Education, the two organizations argue that the state acted illegally when it authorized schools to use Medicaid Reinvestment Funds — money usually earmarked for special education interventions — on school resource officer programs.
That’s not allowed under state or federal law, according to the two groups, which called on the state to “immediately revoke these authorizations, and not provide such authorization in the future.”
At least two school districts — Maple Run Unified School District in St. Albans and the North Country Supervisory Union — used Medicaid dollars last school year to pay for school police, according to a public records request the ACLU placed with the state. They were reimbursed about $139,000 in total.
“We are reviewing the letter and the concern and will advise Vermont school districts as necessary,” Ted Fisher, a spokesperson for the agency, wrote in an email.
Racial justice, civil liberty and disability rights advocates have argued for years that police should not be posted at schools. That debate has taken on renewed urgency since the nationwide police brutality and racial justice protests of the summer.
A handful of school districts, including in Burlington and Montpelier, have since taken police out of their buildings. Three progressive state senators even introduced a bill this year to prohibit schools from hiring police altogether, and Republicans countered with a bill expanding the use of school resource officers. Neither legislative proposal advanced.
The ACLU and Vermont Legal Aid have long been among those who say police do not belong in schools. Wednesday’s letter presented another opportunity for the organizations to make their larger point: that taxpayer funds spent on school cops is a misguided use of scarce resources and one likely to harm rather than help the most vulnerable students.
Federal civil rights data from the 2015-16 school year, the letter said, show that Black students in Vermont were six times more likely to be arrested or referred to law enforcement than their white peers, and students with disabilities were three times more likely to be referred to law enforcement than their non-disabled peers.
That same federal survey showed that about 22,000 Vermont students attended school with a police presence, but no psychologist, nurse, social worker and/or counselor.
The issue of using Medicaid money for police in schools was brought to the attention of the ACLU and Legal Aid by Neighbors for a Safer St. Albans, a community group pushing to reform policing in the city. The group was galvanized by the 2019 arrest of a student with disabilities by then-school resource officer David French. The city later settled a civil rights complaint for $30,000 over the incident in which French pinned the student to the ground and told the boy he was “acting retarded.”
“These are funds that are supposed to help all students in a classroom,” said Reier Erickson, an organizer with the St. Albans group and a parent in the district. “So even if we didn’t have experiences in St. Albans where police hurt students — and we do — but even if we didn’t, we know that for students with disabilities, we know that Black students don’t feel safer with police for a number of reasons.”
Maple Run Superintendent Kevin Dirth said the district had tapped into Medicaid funding to pay for its school resource officers for years, a practice that the Agency of Education appeared to endorse.
Dirth said he needed to wait on direction from the state before asking the school board whether to reallocate local funds to pay for the program, which costs about $250,000 a year in its entirety.
As for whether the district should consider scrapping the program, Dirth said he was squarely pro-police at school.
“I do not have an open mind on this situation. I believe in our (school resource officers). I believe strongly in our SROs. I believe, I have seen the amount of things that have occurred that if we hadn’t had SROs could have turned into problems,” he said.
The district has collected only limited data on the interactions between the officers it has hired and its students, although a summary provided by Dirth appeared to show that only white students had been referred to law enforcement. There was no information collected on socioeconomic status or disability.
Dirth characterized the 2019 arrest as an isolated incident, although one from which the district had learned. SROs now receive training in such things as de-escalation, he said, and the district is being more discerning about the officers it allows to be posted in its hallways.
“Not everyone’s fit for being an SRO,” Dirth said.
A committee appointed by the Maple Run school board to explore the issue is set to release a set of recommendations soon.
John Castle, superintendent of the North Country Supervisory Union, said he had “no idea” Medicaid dollars couldn’t be used this way, and was awaiting clarification from the agency and the district’s attorney.
“If that truly is the case, then we will cease doing that and we will make other provisions to continue to maintain an SRO and use the Medicaid funds for other purposes,” Castle said.
