 So can everybody see the slide now? Will is nodding. So do you want me to be on SRO statistics in research? You want me to go to the next slide? Yes, I'm just trying to pull up. Yes, Vermont SRO statistics, please. Okay. Okay, thank you. So as of 2017, 247 Vermont schools do not have an SRO. 59 schools do. As of 2020, 26 supervisor unions have one or more SRO and 26 do not. So I'll go into more of Vermont search in a moment. The next few slides, if you can go to the next one, show research about whether having SROs in schools makes students feel safer. And what we found was that interacting with SROs was unrelated to feelings of safety. African-American students and victimized students felt less safe. Next slide, please. Having an SRO predicted more arrests for disorderly conduct. Conversely, having an SRO decreased the arrest rate for assault and weapons charges. If we go to slide seven, I'm gonna talk a little bit about the connection between SROs and the school-to-prison pipeline. And on slide eight, there are the contributing factors of the school-to-prison pipeline. What I'd like to point out is that black and brown youth are far more likely to be suspended from school than their white peers. Students who are suspended for at least 10 days are less likely to graduate and more likely to be arrested and incarcerated by their mid-20s. Once in the juvenile justice system, re-entry into school is difficult and the vast majority don't graduate from high school. The ACLU states that many of these on the school part are the failure to meet educational needs, which leads to disengagement, dropouts, and court involvement. On slide 10, we're just gonna skip over some, you can look at this more thoroughly when we have more time if you'd like. So before I get to more Vermont statistics, the next few slides show statistics of who's suspended, expelled, and arrested in specific districts and what those districts replaced their SROs with. And you will see the disparities that exist when there are SROs present in schools, which with the murder of George Floyd were the deciding factors of removing SROs. I was unable to find any research that suggests schools are safer with SROs. So from the killing of George Floyd, many schools adopted the George Floyd resolution, which is linked into this spreadsheet. And it's basically coming up with safer options for schools. You can go to the next slide. Most districts are planning to add on mental health practitioners, behavior interventionists, increased partnerships within the community, and train students and faculty in restorative practices. So Minneapolis was one of several schools that I've listed here who voted to remove the SRO from their schools, as was Milwaukee, and to replace it with restorative practices and a restorative practices team. Denver as well, Portland, Oregon, and Oakland, California. Of course, it's not clear. Okay, and then slide 20. For the 2013-14 school year, nine Vermont schools reported student arrests. Of the nine schools, seven of them have one or more SROs. The percentage of students arrested in Vermont schools exceeds the national average at all nine schools. 53 Vermont schools reported student referrals to law enforcement. Of the 53 schools, 24 of them have one or more SROs. The percentage of students referred to law enforcement in Vermont schools exceeds the national average at 46 of the 53 schools. Okay, the next slide shows overall enrollment, what it looks like in the United States as a whole, and then also we have the example of Burlington High School. So nationally, overall enrollment in schools in the U.S. looks like 50% of students are white, 40% are students of color, about 38% of students referred to law enforcement are white, and 48% are students of color, about 34% of students arrested are white, and 58% of students are students of color. At Burlington High School, to bring it a little more locally, the overall enrollment is about 65% of students are white, and only 30% are students of color. So keep that in mind. Of the students referred to law enforcement, 42% are white, and 57% are students of color. Of the students arrested, 39% are white, and 61% are students of color, and they make up 30% of the population of the school. Then next slide. In my interview, again, I'm just gonna reiterate with police chief Pete, he again said that he would not promote the potential for an active shooter as a reason for having an SRO. He did have some questions. He was wondering, well, then who will handle truancy? Who in the school system will do a welfare check? What do you do when a teen runs away from home, and which teachers or counselors will go into a crisis situation in the classroom? So we wonder on the next slide, please, is an armed uniformed officer really the most appropriate to work with these students on these issues? Or we could do what Oakland, California is doing, for example, where they're hiring student support positions, such as school-based social workers, psychologists, restorative justice practitioners, mental health and behavioral health professionals. And they also plan to have an inclusive community-driven process, which involves parents, students, teachers, school administrators, student support staff, and the Black Organizing Project, as well as other community partners for completing a revised district safety plan with strategies for enhancing student learning, safety, and well-being within the district. So overall, the data suggests that an SRO, that an SRO privileges the safety and well-being of some people over others, and potentially impacts and exacerbates racial trauma in our school community. And you can go to the next slide. Thank you. And that is my portion of the presentation. So, Mary. Okay, Emma, if you could go to the next slide. Thank you, Lara. Sure. So how do we make sure all school community members feel safe, not just some? And how do we seek to resist re-traumatization of trauma-impacted individuals? So one way is by understanding and transforming racial trauma. And this will really lead us into the next portion of our presentation that will happen in February, but I just wanted to connect a few dots for folks and offer a couple of definitions to just hold in your mind for your next meeting and as you are proceeding with your own process. So if you could go to the next slide. I really appreciate Peter Levine's quote, trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering. Next. So what is trauma? Trauma may be thought of as an event, but trauma is the body's response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual's nervous system and ability to cope. It's a normal response to an abnormal situation. And so what is racial trauma? Well, racial trauma is the result of witnessing or experiencing racism, discrimination or structural prejudice. It falls into the category of inescapable attack and it can cause global high activation. And that will be something that we will go into in our second portion of our presentation in February, but I just wanted to say that quickly, global high activation is for those of you who are teachers, perhaps you've seen this is when one particular trigger, and it could be just the sight of an armed uniform police officer can set off a cascade of intense nervous system activation and dysregulation. So for those who are teachers or in group settings, perhaps you've seen when a child has been activated by what seems like the smallest little thing, maybe even a bump to the body and the whole nervous system dysregulates. Okay, next. So Bessel Vander Kolk, who's author of The Body keeps the score. I really appreciate this quote. He says, the greatest hope for traumatized children is to receive a good education in schools where they are seen and known and at their best schools can function as islands of safety in a chaotic world. Next. So how do we transform racial trauma and promote resilience and safety in our schools and communities? Again, we're really going to dive into this in our next presentation, but just wanted to give you a little synopsis. And in a nutshell, on an institutional level, we can eliminate the presence and use of an armed uniformed police officer in schools and for issues of truancy and child welfare. And we can build resilience by becoming trauma literate and creating a trauma-informed trauma-sensitive school system. And then the last thing that I'm gonna leave you with is what does it mean to be trauma-informed? And to be trauma-informed is really quite complex, but just to start, being trauma-informed shifts a perspective. Instead of asking the question, what is wrong with a student, family member, or a teacher, it asks the question, what has happened to them? So thank you so much for your time and attention, and we will look forward to sharing the second half of our presentation later on down the line. Okay, I feel like there was a lot of information provided that I'm sure there are some questions on. I'm gonna stop share just to make sure I realized I can't, okay, good. I can't see the participants when I'm sharing, so I wanted maybe Eliana, if I could make you a co-host also, and you can just keep an eye on the waiting room, just in case any of the committee members join. So I'm really interested, Lara, I appreciate that you came from the perspective. We've had a lot of community members be concerned, especially about the case of an active shooter on campus and talking about SROs as a safety measure to potentially prevent the unthinkable in that type of scenario. And so I appreciate that your perspective is that you were, that was your initial instinct was to say it's probably better to keep an SRO because of these safety reasons and that you went into the research sort of with that lens. And I guess my question is sort of what was the most compelling, I mean, you've painted sort of a broader picture, but what were some of the deal breakers for you where you said, okay, I understand now and I've switched my perspective on this? That's a really great question. And it took me a long time. Well, I would say a few months to get to that point. I was really hemming and hawing about the issue locally here because I'm invested of course in this school. My daughter goes to the schools. So that was indeed my biggest concern of removing the SRO. And just mostly in my trauma course in learning tons about racial trauma and then seeing time and time again, what's happening in the news in our country with police officers in the black community. Like I had to realize that just because of what I'm feeling that was just the biggest thing. Like what I'm feeling and what my fears are and what my experiences as a white person in a white state have been, doesn't mean that should trump anybody else's experiences and fears. So even if there were only a small community of students or community members that felt like they were unsafe and scared with an armed officer in the school, I think that's enough. I think no student should feel that way in a school ever. And I just realized the long history of this going on in our country, it made me understand that traumatic response of just the presence of an officer, how scary that can be. I think because there's not that many of us present, I think people can just unmute and ask questions and we don't have to be as formal as we normally are about raising hands and such. And if you want, I'm happy to project the data. Again, I know we were kind of racking through that. So it might help for me to have that project it again. I was wondering if you feel comfortable with us taking that link and looking at the slideshow when we have free time because there was a whole lot there. And I definitely would like to take another look. Absolutely. Yeah, that was our hope actually that you would be able to look through it. We skipped over a lot of slides too. So you can look over them more thoroughly. Thanks. One of the things that's really been brought up a lot is sort of the lack of data, local data. And so I was interested in particular, my eye was drawn to the Vermont based data that you presented. Yeah, and there really wasn't anything that I could find which I really was hoping for that did prove that having an SRO in a school indeed makes it safer, especially in an active shooter scenario. I wasn't able to find anything in my research which I thought was interesting. Had there been data collected to try to show that? Not that I found. And I even asked police chief Pete that as well if he knew of any statistics that existed around that and he didn't know of any either. So I just didn't have any luck pursuing that. We've heard that talking to a couple of different experts over the past couple of months we've also heard that the local director of the ACLU said that he was aware of no studies nationally that demonstrated benefit. I do wanna say that just based on Libby's presentation and what I know about our school district is that we have invested, we do prioritize mental health services at our school and we have invested in those. So each of our, I think it's three out of our four schools have a designated social worker on staff and we have good guidance counselor ratios and stuff like that. So I think, you know, I do wanna give the Montpelier Roxbury school district their due props, you know, for they have put their money where their mouth is in terms of those types of resources. And I think sometimes it can feel like an argument of, you know, in these other school districts or maybe investing more in mental health services maybe because they were underinvested in them to begin with. And I wonder, you know, I wonder if it's, you know, and this will be a future thing, but in my mind I just sort of go to, I do think we're invested pretty well in mental health services in our district and it may just be sort of a shifting, a reallocation of those resources and not necessarily investing in more. I don't know if Jen is still on, but if she could speak to that a little bit. Hi there, yeah, I'm still on. Are you saying shifting the resources we already have, we already have to other places or shifting the resource of the resource officer to a social worker or a guidance person? I guess I just wanted to give you an opportunity to speak to how well, you know, funded mental health resources are at Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools and that it's not necessarily, I think some people sort of jumped to this conclusion of, okay, well, if we're not employing an SRO maybe we put more money into mental health resources. And I just wanted to... We are well funded for that. Could always use more, you know, absolutely. Maybe someone else that is school to community resource. I wanted to just add, I think that's fabulous. Jen and Emma, thank you for sharing that. It's good to hear that about our schools. There's also a difference though between having those resources and then becoming a trauma-informed school or even a trauma-transformed school. And I don't know what Montpelier has done in terms of that at all. I know in my local school we've had lots of effort by having Dave Malnick from NFI come and work with us and teach all staff. You know, that includes, well, I don't know if we've done it in our school but it should be from what I've learned in my coursework. It should include cafeteria workers, bus drivers, custodial staff, librarians. Everybody who interacts with students should become trauma-informed because it will take the entire school village to provide that consistency for all of the students. So everybody's speaking the same language. Everybody's responding the same ways to the students, particularly if they're in crisis. And we have had Dave Malnick come to our school and do workshops and in-services for us. Susan, I don't know if you remember how long ago that was but it was not recent recent but and many of us have taken full courses in trauma with Dave and different teachers. So yeah, a few people who are trauma-informed. Go ahead, Sue. At the elementary school we've had for the past year and a half we've been working with Joel Van Lent who is also helping us to learn a lot more about trauma-informed practices. And it's been really, really significant. I don't think she's working with the middle school and high school at the moment. I think it's just the elementary school right now. But it's been pretty transformative, like you said, Lara, about helping us learn on a lot of levels, learn about ourselves, learn about how we're reacting with kids, learning about what's going on with kids and really learning about working on it together as a overall approach. That's great. It's definitely a shift, you know, and if you're used to doing things a certain way, it's a shift in mindset and it's definitely a shift in approach. And I think it's not easy to shift that sometimes too in how you respond to kids. And I think the more that schools can continue to review these sorts of practices, the better, so it becomes more ingrained, so it becomes more of a natural response to the students. And one of the things I think we're finding out at the elementary school is because of COVID, we don't have like responders that come in your room and help you with these kids. So educators are needing to pull out a variety of resources. And if you spoke with the principal or the vice principal, they would say like, we're having a lot of success with that. You know, people are trying a lot of different things and the training is having an impact. And if you look at the data, like the behavioral data through Swiss, it's really different this year. So we might wanna look at that in the future and think about less transitions and making life a little calmer for all of our kids and helping the trauma-informed kids too. I mean, the kids who have been through trauma, not trauma-informed, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And so in one of the slides about Oakland, they actually had been doing restorative justice and trauma-informed initiatives before they removed the police. They actually had their own police force within their school, as do I think 23 other in the state of California. But they saw a decrease in suspensions and expulsions, behaviors, just from adopting restorative practices. It's pretty remarkable what it can do. I have a question. So I'm thinking about the phrase trauma-informed practices and I'm wondering if that includes a sort of systemic and racial lens. Because I feel like trauma-informed can sound pretty general, but I feel like without this other piece that is racism, I feel like it's not, I don't know, it doesn't have the same impact and it doesn't pertain to this. It might go after individual experiences of kids without addressing the larger system that they suffer from. I don't know if that's true, but I was just wondering if you could speak to that in terms of training for teachers and what scope it covers. I think that's a great question and I'm gonna have Mary chime in as well, but one thing that they say in our coursework is that you cannot be trauma-informed without acknowledging the racial trauma as well and being informed in that way. The two go hand in hand. It's not either or. Mary, I don't know if you wanna say anything additional. You took the words right out of my mouth. And I was just gonna reiterate Dr. Kenneth Hardy's quote, if it's not racially just, it's not trauma-informed. And part of our training and coursework has been around cultural agility and that would be also included in training for teachers as well. So thank you for the question and I absolutely agree. It's imperative. Wait, did you say cultural agility? Is that what you said? Yes. Okay, cool. I just wanna look that up. I was particularly interested in the interview with Chief Pete and what I saw on that slide, I like a link to the actual interview. Did I see that? Yeah, it's on there. What slide was that? I think it was the one, well, I don't know what number slide it is, but the one that was with his interview, let's see. I think it's near the tree with the hand, the hand tree. Is that before or after this slide? It's slide 22, does that help? Yes, that helps immensely. There should be a link on the bottom of that page. Doesn't look like it's showing up here. Yeah, I can see it, but it's covered. The slide is covered. And so when you were talking to him, it sounded like he was wondering about some things. And do you know if those are things that typically would have fallen under the role of the SRO or are those are just things he's wondering about? My understanding was these were things that the SRO would handle. And certainly in our training, we would not support a police officer being the person intervening in these issues, especially when you've got a crisis in the classroom. Can you imagine how intimidating that would be to have a police officer come in, an armed police officer as a student, that perspective, as opposed to somebody you have a really good trusting relationship with, a teacher that you've bonded with and connected with, who knows you really well. So yeah, he did go into, you can look in the notes of the interview, but he told me about the training that SROs go through here specifically in Montpelier and in Vermont. And how it's a little, it's I think 40 hours additional as to what a regular police officer does. So it's just an additional 40 hours. And some of it does involve restorative practices, some trauma informed approaches. However, it just seems like it's such an intimidating thing. And I get the argument, some people say that, well, we wanna really connect students with police officers and build that positive relationship. But I think for some people, we're too far past that as a society. And I think at this point, it's just way too scary. I will mention that we, some of the feedback that we received in our interviews with schools that have, I don't know if Jen also can speak to this, but in some of the interviews that I had with some of the schools that don't have SROs, they answered those questions that you have bullet pointed there and kind of echoed some of the sentiments that you just said, Lara, where because their systems were not, their systems to handle truancy or welfare checks or runaways were not built around an SRO position, they were kind of surprised, they had to think of the few people that I interviewed, they had to sort of like wrap their brain around the concept of bringing a police officer with them to a welfare check or to talk to a family about truancy. And the reaction that I got from both of the schools that I interviewed was sort of to the effect of like, I think that would fundamentally change the dynamic of a home visit, if I were to bring a police officer with me and I'm not sure that I, in a way that I would want it to. So there's like an inherent sort of power dynamic and intimidation factor and some of the families that happen to, their kids happen to be more truant, you know, might be, might not have the best relationships with police officers and might not have the best, you know, most trusting relationship with police officers. So it wouldn't necessarily evoke feelings of, you know, trust and the types of things that the guidance counselor that I spoke to is trying to form with those families where the kids aren't coming to school, you know, they're trying to build trust with those families and find out, you know, and find out any way to get the kid to come to school and that bringing a police officer may not help with that mission. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And I think, you know, in my school community, we have even little preschoolers who witness their parents getting arrested, you know, the police officer coming to their house and taking away their parent or, you know, in an emergency DCF removal situation. So I think there are a lot of things that come into play that can be very frightening for children to see an armed officer and be re-traumatizing, quite frankly. I would love to add that one of the tenants of becoming trauma sensitive is recognizing that aggravating behavior is a cause for pause. And so just to encapsulate what Laura and others have been saying, that there is the potential for re-traumatization and an aggravating behavior. And that is a cause for pause in the classroom and otherwise. I'm trying to figure out if I have a question or not, or if I just want to try to restate something that I'm hearing from the two of you, that my understanding of trauma-informed practices, what you're saying about SROs is completely independent of the conduct of the officer, that the presence of the officer, the uniform, the badge, the gun is more than sufficient to function as a re-traumatizing stimulus that can aggravate the situation, regardless of whether that officer's conduct and judgment is biased or exemplary. Either way, it can be a serious re-traumatizing force. Is that correct? I would say correct and well said. Thank you. Yeah, I think you definitely nailed it. And I think that's the argument that I hear a lot, is can you still hear me? My internet is unstable apparently. Okay. Is that the argument is, well, these things don't happen here and we have stellar police officers and SROs and that's I'm sure very true. I don't personally know the SROs that were in the school before and the one that was hired for this year and this is in no way against them personally. But you're exactly right, it's just the presence, that's all it needs to be, that's enough to re-traumatize. And we certainly don't wanna do that in schools, we don't wanna re-traumatize children. Yeah, through this whole process, I haven't heard a bad word uttered about any individual police officer. You know, I think people do, there's a real, I don't think it's fair to marry the argument against SROs with some sort of anti-police sentiment. It's not about that, it's more about what you're talking about. And I think when I asked you what your sort of, what was maybe your biggest takeaway in shifting your perspective from wanting an SRO to protect against really scary potential dangers and then changing your mind and you said it was more of a shift of perspective about your feelings of safety and your perceptions of safety weren't necessarily the same as other people in recognizing that sometimes you have to put the feelings of other people above your own feelings of safety. So like my relationship with police officers is gonna be very different from a kid in the foster care system, or we've also heard from immigrant families through other channels that their relationship with police officers is one of fear and trauma. Okay, well, geez, I mean, we might even be able to turn early, but I just wanna make sure that while we have you here, and you know, at our next meeting on the 26th, we're gonna be sort of gathering everything we've heard and trying to put it together in a comprehensive way to present to the board. I just wanna make sure that all the committee members present, you know, have any, all their questions answered and any clarification that they need while we have you present. I did have one other question since we have a minute. I don't wanna keep us too long, but I'm a little fixated on this Chief Pete interview. And I was kind of wondering, did he indicate sort of like a job description or tasks that would be assigned to the SRO other than sort of these big ideas that are here on the screen? Like, did he say the SRO? So, Susan, I just wanna jump into, because I don't know, when was this interview conducted with Chief Pete? I did this October 28th. Okay, because I do know that him and Libby since this charge and the committee has been formed, I know that him and Libby have done a ton of work together, reimagining, you know, even just in the short term since the board has asked for a limited presence of police officers on campuses, I know that they've done a lot of work together to reimagine what the police response will be at schools. And I think they've probably delved into the answers to most of these questions at this point. That's sort of my understanding is that they're at a very different place now in terms of their, you know, it's a shock to a system when a system is built around a particular position and then that position is removed sort of unceremoniously at a school board meeting, even if it's temporary. And so it took some time for them to wrap their brains around that. But I believe in their professionalism and they're both have been amazing. I know that they've talked through at least some of these questions. Great, thanks for the clarification. That's helpful, thanks. And also Chief Pete provided to us a few documents that are in the MPD feedback in our stakeholder survey at the, if you scroll to the bottom, he provided a few documents and a couple of them are SRO related documents that the police department has created since the board asked for the limited physical presence of police officers in September. So they created a what is an SRO which would talk about the specific duties and roles of an SRO. And Libby also did a presentation on what the SRO, past SRO, all the things that he did and all the trainings that he had. So that would be worth it to go back and look at that list of what she did gave. So a lot of behind the scenes things going on that are not in the school, not school based. So thank you, Jen. Okay, I also wanna take one more second and just see if there's any members of the public that now after we've gone through our discussion and had the presentation, if there is public comment at this juncture, you would be welcome. To ask questions now. All right, well, if nobody else has any further questions, we could entertain a motion to adjourn. I move to adjourn. And I guess before we do all of that, I just wanna thank Laura and Mary, I think the amount of time and effort that you put into the research and culling through all of the data, it's something that I don't, a lot of us as volunteer committee members and with full-time jobs on the side, don't have time to sift through all of that stuff and kind of wish that we could. And so I think it's really great that you've taken that time and put it together in such a nice presentation. So if you share that with me, I will make sure that it gets to the hands of the rest of the committee members and then probably ultimately in front of the board. Thank you. Great, thank you so much. So I think I should officially do the roll call to adjourn. So Susan, do you wanna second, or I'll second it, but Susan? Aye. Will? Aye. Edie, are you there? Aye. Jen? All right. So adjourned. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.