A committee of Maple Run Unified School District residents says the district should modify, but not get rid of, its school resource officer program.
The district includes St. Albans City and Town, plus Fairfield.
The committee, which met seven times from January through June, issued a set of 10 recommendations this month.
Committee members came to a consensus on seven of the items but deferred on the other three to the Maple Run school board for further discussion.
The school board has yet to vote on the recommendations, which it received June 16.
Board chair Nilda Gonnella-French did not respond to requests for comment from VTDigger. A message sent to the committee’s email address had been forwarded to Gonnella-French.
As it stands, the program funds three St. Albans Police Department officers in the district: one at Bellows Free Academy, a high school in St. Albans City; one at St. Albans City Elementary School; and one at St. Albans Town Educational Center. Officers sometimes visit other district schools, too.
“These recommendations are certainly a beginning,” John Nicholls, a parent in the district and co-chair of the committee, told the school board June 16. “But they need more work.”
Two committee members, including Nicholls and Kathi Fuller, who’s also a parent, wrote letters dissenting from the group’s final recommendations. Both said they thought the committee’s work was incomplete, and they favored shifting to a police liaison program in which officers might not necessarily be stationed at the schools.
Fuller wrote that, “while there is a clear need for an effective relationship” between the St. Albans police and the school district, the research and outreach conducted by the committee did not justify a need to employ three full-time officers.
“A liaison program would enable that communication and coordination to continue, allowing the district to benefit from the expertise that police officers have in law enforcement and public safety/security but without an all-day/everyday presence of uniformed, on-duty law enforcement officers in school buildings,” she wrote.
‘Clarifying and narrowing’
The committee recommended that the school board modify the school resource officer program “by clarifying and narrowing the duties and responsibilities” officers have, according to a report presented at the board meeting earlier this month.
Officers should focus specifically on campus safety matters and legal enforcement of criminal issues mandated by state law, the committee said, recommending the school board further examine whether home visits, student wellness visits and truancy cases should continue to involve a police officer or be shifted to another professional.
The committee also recommended officers go through the same training as the rest of the district’s staff on issues such as implicit bias, and said the district should better track key data points about the program, such as interactions between officers and students. The district also should increase communication about the purpose of the program to the school community, the committee said.
Furthermore, the committee recommended the district make extra effort to ensure the program is “fostering positive outcomes” for those who identify with a marginalized community, including BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ students and those with disabilities.
Separate from the program, the committee recommended the district conduct a comprehensive analysis of students’ and staff’s mental health needs, and add more therapy dogs.
By the numbers
In drafting its recommendations, the committee used data from surveys of students in grades 7 through 12, as well as staff, about the school resource officer program.
About 56% of students who answered the survey said they thought officers should be in the schools, and about 30% said they had no preference. Of the students who answered “no,” about 45% identified with a minority demographic.
More than 70% of students said they rarely or never interacted with an officer, while about 14% said they did so once a week and 8% said they did daily.
According to the data, 70% of staff said they thought officers should be in the schools, while 18% were unsure or had no preference.
Maple Run’s school resource officer program costs about $250,000 a year — among the highest in the state, according to a VTDigger analysis. About 25 supervisory unions and large districts in Vermont employ at least one school resource officer.
The Maple Run program came under scrutiny after a student with disabilities was arrested in 2019 by then-school resource officer David French. St. Albans 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.”
A handful of the Vermont school districts, including Burlington and Montpelier, have taken police officers out of their buildings in the past year.