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Colorado State Board of Education members on Wednesday unanimously approved a resolution signaling their support for students to feel safe in schools.
The board rarely votes on resolutions making a statement but the chair wanted to give members a chance to speak out. The resolution comes as school districts around the country are grappling with how to respond to the Trump administration crackdown on immigration and its impact on students.
First discussed in February, the resolution was amended multiple times by both Democratic and Republican board members in an attempt to find language that everyone agreed on.
As the board debated the language of the resolution, members argued about getting into political statements and the merits of immigration policies or actions. At one point, two Republican board members discussed the usage of illegal immigrant as opposed to the term illegal alien in a piece of language that failed.
The final approved resolution states that the board is “committed to supporting public schools to ensure that all students feel safe and supported in schools” and is “aware that Colorado schools serve diverse communities who may feel worried or uncertain about the safety of their students.”
“We should be advocating across the political spectrum to ensure that our schools are safe places where learning is not disrupted,” the resolution states.
State Board Chair Rebecca McClellan, who represents Aurora, one of the targets of federal immigration raids last month, introduced the resolution, saying she wanted to give the board an opportunity to speak in a unified voice “to affirm the right of every Colorado student to receive a free public education.”
The resolution also made a point of tying that affirmation to the state’s recent goals of improving attendance and reducing the number of students who are chronically absent as a way to help student achievement rise.
Some district leaders, including in Denver and Jeffco, have discussed attendance rates dropping in certain schools as they see some immigrant families afraid to leave their homes because of fears of encountering immigration enforcement agents. Local school districts have also passed resolutions in support of immigrant students, often with more direct language, but also with more authority to enact local policies on how schools will respond if immigration agents show up at a school.
The state board does not have much authority over such decisions, and so its resolution is more of a symbolic gesture.
McClellan thanked the board for having a professional discussion despite disagreements.
One amendment that was successful was introduced by Republican State Board member Kristi Burton Brown, who wanted to add a line that also signaled support for law enforcement.
“We support the actions of law enforcement to remove violent criminals from Colorado and, in so doing, making our school children safer when they walk to school and back home,” the final language of that amendment reads.
“The arrests we have seen happen in Colorado are of violent criminals, the arrests we have seen across the nation are of violent criminals who are endangering our children on their way to and from school,” Burton Brown said. “Violent criminals should be taken off of our streets if they are here illegally and so I think that my suggested amendment is coming from a bipartisan standpoint that’s saying if we want our kids to be safe in school we should want them to also be safe on their way to and from school.”
Some board members opposed the language saying that violent criminals exist in any group, and some of the immigration enforcement actions have instead been blanket door-to-door raids. Nationally, the raids have swept up many people with no criminal record.
The amendment passed with three board members opposed, but was not an obstacle for board members approving the final resolution.
State Board member Kathy Plomer, who represents areas of Thornton that were also targeted last month when federal immigration raids were conducted in Denver and Aurora, also introduced an amendment that would have acknowledged the Trump administration’s decision to rescind a decades-long policy that treated schools as sensitive or protected locations where immigration enforcement could only take place if there was an immediate danger to the public.
Her amendment would have read: “We’re aware that Colorado schools serve diverse communities who feel worried or uncertain about the safety of their students based on the removal of schools as protected spaces and recent neighborhood immigration enforcement activities.”
But Republican board members said they would not support the resolution with that language because it felt overly political.
State Board member Burton Brown said she felt the removal of any protected spaces where federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, was blocked from entering to remove “someone including those who are violent criminals” was a good thing that made students safer.
State Board member Steve Durham said that if the board was going to open the door to be political by introducing such resolutions, he had in mind several more political resolutions he could introduce soon.
Plomer said her amendment was intended to add clarity so school districts knew that the State Board understood what had changed to make them deal with this issue now.
But, in the end, she said having a bipartisan statement was more important and revoked the amendment.
“I don’t want to just create chaos that’s not doing anything, and getting in the way of something that I hope could be productive, and a statement from this board, that we want kids to come to school and feel safe,” Plomer said.
State Board member Yazmin Navarro, also a Republican, thanked Plomer.
“I think it’s amazing that you want to work with everyone on the board and that you’re willing to do that. That’s hard,” Navarro said. “It goes back to the idea that everyone’s sentiment has been across the board that we’re all here for students.”
Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.
