The School Committee approves a policy to allow the Protect Act to be implemented in Chicopee Public Schools.
Photo credit: ChicopeeTV
CHICOPEE — The city may soon have a new procedure in case any law enforcement agent attempts to complete a civil arrest within Chicopee Public Schools.
The School Committee approved the first reading of a policy for interacting with law enforcement officers engaged in civil law enforcement during its Sept. 2 meeting. It’s a decision that follows Gov. Maura Healey’s recently established PROTECT Act, which keeps Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of courthouses, schools and hospitals. Chicopee’s proposed policy will go in front of the School Committee one more time for final approval at its next meeting.
Assistant Superintendent of Student Support Services April Rist explained that the proposed policy prohibits Chicopee school staff from assisting in civil arrests on school property during school hours. It will require Chicopee Public Schools to establish procedures for school and district staff if any law enforcement, including local or state law enforcement or immigration agents, try to complete a civil arrest within any Chicopee school.
Rist said there are procedures that the administration team needs to create and implement, but approving the policy allows the district to start the planning process.
The policy still allows the removal of someone causing safety problems, but the language also ensures that a law enforcement agent has the correct paperwork to make that removal.
“They have to have a warrant that’s signed by a judge, not simply an administrative warrant,” Rist stated. “The guidance that the state put out is actually really good. They give us examples of what we should be looking for when we’re looking at warrants that are presented to us in the schools.”
There will be at least one staff member in each building who is educated about the matter in case a situation arises.
Superintendent Dr. Marcus Ware said he and the administration team will begin to discuss and implement procedures throughout the district.
“This isn’t because Dr. Ware said so; this is because Governor Healey passed a law and, as a result, [the state] released a statement to say this needs to be implemented in your school districts by the start of the year,” Ware explained. “As a result, it has to come to [the School Committee] and with the nine guidelines that are in there, my team needs to go back, and we need to figure out how to make it work within the structure of our setting.”
Mayor John Vieau, who chairs the School Committee, said the PROTECT Act outlines procedures that will be implemented where applicable.
Once the procedures are established and in place, Rist and Ware said they will be presented to the School Committee and posted online.
Debate ensued before the vote was made. School Committee member Carlton Brooks moved to table the motion. He was concerned that approving the policy meant the School Committee may not have a say in the procedures eventually implemented.
Brooks explained, “We’re in a new era of how things are done and we’re seeing our kids scooped up and taken, and I just want to be sure whatever policies we have in place that we’re making sure that the kids are the safest; that is priority and if there was something that we didn’t agree on, we would at least have the opportunity to have that discussion.”
Chicopee School Committee member David Barsalou agreed that students should be protected but claimed that the law that Healey passed is technically unenforceable and federal agents have the final say.
“I don’t want to be somebody’s rubber stamp,” Barsalou stated. “If they want to pass this in the Legislature, fine, I’m not going to stand in the way of the feds, and I’m not going to stand in the way of whatever the Legislature passes.”
The School Committee voted 7-3 with two abstentions to waive its policy to attempt to approve the proposal that evening, but final approval of the proposed policy was tabled until legal counsel is available to join the meeting.
The School Committee’s next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 16.
