The Winooski school district is considering creating a “sanctuary school” policy to better protect immigrant students and families as the nation heads into a second Donald Trump presidency.
Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria has prepared a draft policy that calls for restricting immigration agents’ access to school grounds and prohibiting school staff from collaborating with immigration authorities. He expects the school board to take it up at its meeting next week.
Chavarria, who said he has heard from parents worried about whether their children will get detained and deported while at school, said the policy would act as “a formalized message” to help reassure the district’s immigrant families.
During Trump’s first term in office, a number of municipalities — including several in Vermont — as well as school districts declared themselves “sanctuary cities” or “sanctuary schools” in an effort to protect undocumented immigrants by refusing to cooperate with immigration enforcement. The Trump administration responded by waging legal challenges and attempting to withhold federal funding from those places — something his new “border czar” Tom Holman has again pledged to do.
But the threat of retaliation hasn’t deterred Winooski’s superintendent. The effort comes in Vermont’s most diverse city as immigration lawyers and activists nationwide brace for a potential immigration crackdown involving mass deportation of undocumented residents, as per Trump’s campaign promise.
“It says to our communities, this is on our minds and we are willing to spend board meeting time and thinking to really plan on how we will support you and ensure that we do not become complicit in the creation of that culture of fear,” said Chavarria.
The objective of the proposed policy is to provide education “free of barriers, regardless of a child’s or family member’s immigration status,” and to create a safe place for students and families facing fear and anxiety about immigration enforcement efforts, according to the six-page draft document shared by Chavarria.
Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver, a teacher at Winooski High School, said students, in discussions at school, have talked about experiencing anxiety in the aftermath of the presidential election.
Some of the reactions she has documented include students saying, “I’m so glad I have papers. Everyone else like me without papers is going home” and expressing anxiety on behalf of friends or family who are not citizens.
A volunteer task force of educators and advocacy organizations have helped draft the policy, which is modeled after one first developed for K-12 schools in California.
Alyssa Chen, coalition coordinator for the Education Justice Coalition of Vermont, which worked on the draft document, said the policy is “really important in this moment” to ensure that immigrant students are protected.
“We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen but we know that fear is going to increase in the new year and that that may interrupt the ability for students to show up to school in an emotional space to learn,” Chen said.
A couple of school districts in southern Vermont and in the Upper Valley are also having preliminary discussions with equity advocates exploring the sanctuary schools effort, according to Chen.
The policy prioritizes thinking about the social and emotional well-being of students, said Monica Nachemja-Bunton, a longtime Vermont educator now at the Upper Valley Educators Institute in New Hampshire, a regional teacher training program.
“We don’t want our students to be traumatized. We don’t want students and families to be scared of coming to class in case (immigration or federal) agents show up. We don’t want families to be scared about bringing their children to school,” she said. “So this is a policy where our intention is to remove that trauma, to remove that fear and instead support access to schools and access to learning and access to safe spaces.”
In addition to restricting immigration agents’ access on school campuses and prohibiting staff from collaborating with them, Winooski’s draft policy would also limit the sharing of student and family information and provide resources about legal rights for immigrant students and their families.
“Having specific policies in place is going to have a huge impact — so there’s not this sort of dark cloud hanging over students and families,” said Nachemja-Bunton.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Winooski to consider ‘sanctuary school’ policy to protect immigrant students.