The Burlington School Board voted Thursday to ask the city to continue to fund the school resource officer program for the next school year and set up a task force to evaluate the program longer-term.
The board narrowly voted down another resolution that would have stipulated the program continue but that officers would not be armed or in uniform. Commissioners Martine Gulick, Monika Ivancic, Aden Haji, Kathy Olwell and Kendra Sowers supported that resolution, which lost in a 6-5 vote.
The Vermont Racial Justice Alliance has called for the removal of officers from schools, along with demands for a 30% reduction in uniformed officers and a reinvestment in programs that uplift communities of color.
The city has until July 1 to pass a budget for the upcoming fiscal year, and is set to discuss the budget at its June 29 meeting. 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 board voted 7-5 to request the city continue to fund the program. The five commissioners who voted for the earlier resolution to disarm the officers and have them not wear uniforms voting against the final resolution.
Haji said that he did not want the district to have armed officers in the schools, especially after hearing from the community.
“I definitely think we should definitely listen to the community as a majority of them are asking to remove the armed police,” he said.
Olwell said that Black people and other people of color have been speaking out against armed officers in the schools
“We’re just saying, ‘OK, we’re going to give them another year to discuss this’,” she said. “We keep giving the police, all across this country, leeway … and what happens? Black people are still getting killed.”
Henri Sparks, the district’s director of equity, said that the district remained supportive of the SRO program, though he understood the community’s concerns.
Interim Police Chief Jon Murad presented to the board and showed statistics on the SRO program. He argued that the program had been successful in the district, and pointed to data showing a decrease in overall juvenile arrests and arrest frequency by SROs in recent years.
“It is something we should not be throwing out because in other places it does not achieve the same kinds of results,” he said.
But the data also showed that Black juveniles were arrested at a disproportionate rate when compared to the percentage of Black residents.
Commissioner Stephen Carey said he supported continuing the program.
“Burlington I think is a special place, and the program we have in place in the schools is a special program that seems to be working,” he said.
The resolution also states that the department, district staff and school board should adjust the program’s guidelines to “decrease the negative perceptions of having police officers present on school grounds.”
The task force is set to examine the intention and functions of the program, determine if any of those functions must be performed by uniformed law enforcement and explore options for alternative approaches that reinforce a restorative practice model.
The full board meeting Thursday follows a meeting of the board’s diversity, equity and inclusion committee Tuesday, where around a dozen community members called to remove the SROs from schools and a handful of commissioners expressed their support.
Around a dozen people also commented Thursday, a vast majority expressing support for removing the officers from the schools.
The district ran a survey that received 417 responses, with 57% of respondents saying they did not believe that there should be officers in the schools, with 33% saying they thought there should be officers in schools.
Only 17 current students responded to the survey, and 62% of respondents were residents of Burlington.
