GREENFIELD — Several Greenfield High School students spoke out Wednesday against the possibility of reinstating the school resource officer (SRO) — a position that was cut from the budget last year — in response to an uptick of disturbances requiring police response.
“Greenfield High School has always had students of different backgrounds and situations,” senior Averry Jacobs said at Wednesday’s School Committee meeting. “Many of these students have dealt with issues like police trauma. Invalidating a human’s right to feel safe inside an area that is specifically meant to help educate and make them feel safe is not OK.”
Jacobs said the funding for an SRO could instead be used in ways that could “better our schools.” Other students advocated for hiring more counselors and providing better mental health support, particularly for students of color.
Another student, Crystal Colón, asked the School Committee to consider why the community would be comfortable with an SRO now, when they weren’t previously.
“Why waste valuable resources that will make students uncomfortable in the one place they should feel safe?” she said, citing a statistic that 90% of SROs are armed. “Many of our students have trauma involved with the police, and when most of our issues aren’t SRO related, inserting one would only cause more issues rather than solving the ones we already have.”
Aisha Pruitt Gonzalez, a junior at Greenfield High School, echoed the sentiments of her peers.
“We believe that employing a school resource officer will do nothing except create a hostile, tense environment between our staff and the student body,” Pruitt Gonzalez said. “It will create a strange power dynamic where teachers now have the opportunity to send their young students into the arms of an officer, a possibly armed officer.”
During a November School Committee meeting, students, parents and teachers spoke to their concern for behavioral issues causing near daily disruptions at the middle and high schools. Among the concerns raised was the frequency of police response to schools for a variety of issues, including fights and verbal altercations.
“I think there’s been an uptick of calls, but that very well could be because we don’t have a school resource officer there that would handle the smaller calls,” Deputy Police Chief William Gordon said previously. “There’s an uptick for requests for assistance.”
A subsequent meeting saw the School Committee vote in favor of directing Superintendent Christine DeBarge to work with Police Chief Robert Haigh Jr. “on safety and support options” that police could potentially offer the schools.
Speaking Wednesday, DeBarge said she is continuing her conversations with Haigh on a “continuum of options,” not necessarily limited to hiring an SRO.
“Right now, we’re in the evaluation phase of the discussion,” she said.
Additionally, DeBarge and Assistant Superintendent Karin Patenaude are meeting with different providers to talk about embedding trauma-informed care work for staff, as well as work focused on race and equity.
“The work that was being done before the pandemic needs to be revitalized,” DeBarge said.
Students who spoke during the public comment period on Wednesday said if it comes to a point where the decision is made to reinstate an SRO, they ask administrators to consider a few points.
“If worst comes to worst, and we are eventually required to have an SRO, I feel some requirements should be that they should not be armed … and should have extensive bias training,” said sophomore Daniel Pena-Chadee, adding that special training for disarming a student should also be a requirement. “They should really be able to understand … what we have been through. Every person of color has gone through something that was not right, concerning their race.”
Rory Cronen-Townsend, a senior at the high school, said as a “very privileged person, school has always been a very safe environment” for her.
“Emotional (and physical) safety at school should be the No. 1 priority,” she said. “We have seen over the past many years that police officers … in many cases, do not have the emotional and physical safety of people of color in mind. Bringing an SRO, bringing a police officer who is armed and in many cases doesn’t have the (bias) training that allows them to get past that, puts our students of color at risk, and that is not something that is acceptable.”
Reporter Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-930-4429. Twitter: @MaryEByrne