NORTHAMPTON — School Committee members voted to approve a policy that aims to protect students from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in accordance with state law.
Gov. Maura Healey signed the PROTECT Act, which prohibits immigration arrests without a judicial warrant or court-issued order at courthouses, public schools, child and healthcare facilities and other state-owned or state-operated spaces.
Northampton’s new policy would delegate the superintendent and school principals to be the point person for interacting with law enforcement and direct Superintendent Annie Azarloza to meet with the teachers’ union’s Immigrant Solidarity Committee to implement district-specific procedures to accompany the policy.
Amid concerns that the policy’s procedures had not been adequately defined, School Committee member Anat Weisenfreund suggested that the policy be tabled until after Azarloza has met with the Northampton Association of School Employees.
“I think we’re almost there, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet,” Weisenfreund said. “If we do wait until next time, the superintendent will likely also have more information from her meeting with NASE about the procedures … it will bring us a richer understanding of how the policy is going to be operationalized.”
When Azarloza noted that the city is legally required to draft its own policy in accordance with state law, Weisenfreund maintained that she wished “not to rush” the process and argued that there was a “depersonalized quality,” to Northampton’s policy.
The policy requires the district to set procedures to ease interactions between principals and law enforcement officials who either arrive on school grounds or request information about students or school employees. It also requires procedures for contacting the school district’s attorney and superintendent upon contact with ICE and notifying parents in the event of an ICE intervention.
Although the committee voted to approve the policy and send it to the Rules and Procedures subcommittee, School Committee member Michael Stein echoed Weisenfreund’s concerns that the policy is procedure-oriented and the procedures had not yet been finalized.
“The distinction that is often upheld between procedure and policy is often difficult to maintain … we often get ourselves into knots about this,” Stein said. “There’s a lot of things, state law-wise we’re in violation of and it’s interesting to see which ones we have urgency around addressing and which ones we don’t.”
Others, such as School Committee member Valerie Reiss, believed the draft procedures set forth in the policy were complete enough to garner the School Committee’s support.
“I am very comfortable with passing this, balancing the sense of urgency with the sense of completeness,” Reiss said. “I wouldn’t want to rush to something if it felt truly undone, but since this does feel done to me, I feel like I can support it.”
School Committee member Tiffany Jewell, who also serves on the district’s Rules and Procedures subcommittee, explained that the distinction between policies and procedures allows for procedures to evolve and change with time.
The district’s new policy followed the School Committee’s vote to approve a resolution to bar ICE from all six Northampton public schools in August.
The drafting of procedures was also a central part of the committee’s discussion when it voted to approve the resolution in August. Committee member Renika Montgomery-Tamakloe said then she believed training for staff should be fortified by ensuring they have backup.
“We all have seen how aggressive ICE can be, and even though people have training and they have good intentions, one person may feel very isolated and alone, and forced to give up information just because of how aggressive they are,” Montgomery-Tamakloe previously said. “I want us to keep that in mind and have redundancies in place so that it’s not just one person standing alone, it’s at least a group of two.”
