School board hears from public about ICE memo and teacher raises, postpones discussion about year-round calendar

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the February 18 School Board of Alachua County meeting, the board heard from the public about teacher raises and a recent memo on law enforcement interactions and postponed a discussion on the year-round calendar for Rawlings Elementary.

New student representative

At the beginning of the meeting, Charity Camps, the new student representative to the school board, was introduced. Charity is dual-enrolled at Santa Fe College and Gainesville High School, where she is a senior and the Student Body Vice President. She is part of Black Student Union, National Honor Society, Amplified Student Voice Coalition, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and she works at Publix. She has been the varsity cheer captain and holds certifications in four Adobe applications. She plans to attend a four-year university and study forensic science.

Chair Sarah Rockwell announced that citizen input was limited to two minutes per speaker because more than 20 people were signed up before the citizen input period started (the board’s policy is to reduce the time from three minutes to two minutes when the list reaches 20 people).

Summary of district’s guidance on law enforcement interactions

During citizen input, 21 speakers asked the board to reconsider the guidance in a recent memo on law enforcement interactions, which applies to all law enforcement officers and can be found here. The memo states that it was sent out “in light of recent changes to immigration enforcement protocols in schools” and states that the district “does not request or maintain information regarding a student’s immigration status.” Student records cannot be released without written parental consent; a subpoena, warrant, or court order; or a health or safety emergency, and this “applies to all law enforcement agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”

The memo continues: “Under federal law, ICE agents have broad authority to enforce federal immigration law, including interviewing and removing students with or without a warrant.” If a law enforcement officer seeks to interview or remove a student, school administrators will request identification; ask to make copies of any warrants, subpoenas, or judicial orders; request permission to contact the student’s parent before the student is interviewed or removed; ask that an administrator be permitted to retrieve the student; request to be present during the student interview; and ask the officer to complete a form if a student is removed from campus.

The memo concludes: “All district employees must comply with directives from law enforcement officers. Failure to do so may result in legal consequences, including arrest for tampering with, interfering with or obstructing a law enforcement investigation or law enforcement official.”

Citizen input

One speaker advocated for designating schools as “private spaces,” which she said would require a “judicial warrant to enter.” Another speaker called the memo “unethical and inadequate” and said, “It is now easier for a federal agent to come into school and question or remove a child without a federal judicial warrant than it is for the parent of that child to come and either visit their child or take them out of school.” She continued, “How are our schools educating all students at each grade level of their right not to cooperate with agents?”

Dr. Chloe Winant, a science teacher at Howard Bishop Middle School, also asked whether schools are considered “private spaces.” She said, “I find it deeply problematic that ICE officers, who do not have to present a badge, can interview and remove students from classrooms… And I also want to know how we are educating our families of their rights.” She also asked the board to give teachers a raise above 3%. 

A parent of a Buchholz student said she believes the “policy that has been adopted of letting ICE into schools without a judicial warrant does not conform to federal law and to the law that has been followed by other community-based organizations.”

Another parent said her son “needs the classroom of people he signed up with in kindergarten to graduate with him in fifth grade and to continue beyond from there… I can’t have him lose his classmates. You need to do something about the fear that they have and keep them focused, please.”

Rafael Solarzano, a professor at the University of Florida, said it’s “heartbreaking to learn that the district believes it’s acceptable for ICE to bypass district protocols, like presenting a judicial warrant to interview and remove students… We must protect our students and families from policies that revert to thinly-veiled racist policies, that pushes them into the shadows or hiding… I urge you not to be bullied by federal administration and the state leaders. We are not an invisible community.”

Alejandra Contreras, who said she is an attorney and “an expert in constitutional law, contract law, corporate law, immigration law, criminal procedure, and criminal defense,” said, “There is no law that allows warrantless arrests of citizens… Prior to detention, reasonable suspicion must be established. We cannot ask for teachers and people that work at schools to determine what reasonable suspicion is.” She said the district must request that “any government official that comes to the school presents a judicial warrant.”

A parent asked the district to “think through the policy and think through the trickle-down to our children crying at home or parents being scared to drop their kids off at school.”

Another parent said, “I know that other districts and other states around the country are standing up against this disruptive and cruel process and will not allow ICE to enter schools without a judicial warrant. As a taxpayer, as the parent of Alachua County public school children, I expect more of my school board here. I want you to protect students as much as possible, to the full extent of the law, and to promote a safe educational environment for all of our students here.”

A parent said, “It is not school staff’s job to determine reasonable suspicion. That is the job of a judicial warrant. How is that even being done without racial profiling?… We cannot call ourselves a welcoming community with this protocol in place. We, you, me, us, cannot be in the business of causing terror.”

GHS teacher Rebecca Ragan said, “Gainesville is a very diverse place, so it’s really disappointing and shameful to allow ICE in our schools to take our students. Anyone could theoretically impersonate an ICE agent. So it’s really baffling to me, the fact that we’re just going to let these kids be interviewed or even taken by strangers… I just ask you to please be on the right side of history.”

A parent said, “I really resonate with something someone said earlier about how Gainesville and Alachua County really is that stand-up county and that little mighty blue in a sea of red that stands up to the – for lack of a better word, BS that is coming from our current administration, that is illegal… Complying in advance is how dictators get power and fascists become able to do whatever they want to do, which is what we’re seeing across the board. And we are better than that here in Alachua County, and we’ve proven that, over and over and over and over, many times… No ICE officer should get past the front desk when they come to a school without a judicial warrant.”

Six people asked the board to increase compensation for teachers, and one teacher asked for the mileage rate to be increased for teachers who travel between schools. Another teacher asked for early-release Wednesdays to be reinstated. 

School calendars

During an agenda item to approve the year-round calendar for Rawlings Elementary, Member Thomas Vu said there are 25% fewer students at Rawlings this year, following the change to a year-round schedule, and that “tells me we did a terrible job of informing families that this year-round school was happening. We didn’t get any type of input or engagement from the families or from the teachers and staff at Rawlings, and we didn’t consider the cost or the increased burdens this has in the community and in the neighborhood, and it feels like people are showing that to us with their feet. And I’m just here to express my displeasure at how this was done and hoping we do a better job next year.”

Rockwell asked how long the district had committed to the pilot year-round program, and the answer was that the district had committed to the state to have a year-round school for four years. Vu asked whether there is a penalty for withdrawing from the program. Rockwell asked where students transferred to after leaving Rawlings, and she also asked for attendance numbers on days that the schools on the regular calendar are closed.

One member of the public said her family finds the schedule challenging because the students are in school when other students are off and staff at Rawlings may have to work on days their own children are out of school.

Vu made a motion to table the calendar to the next meeting, “until we can answer whether we can withdraw from this four-year pilot.”

Member Leanetta McNealy pointed out that they hadn’t even finished a school year, so they didn’t have any data about whether student performance had improved. She added, “I would plead with this board – before we made any drastic steps, that we do look at the data, we do listen to parents… Think of the morale of our staff, our teachers, everyone at Rawlings before we make any more comments.”

Based on advice from Board Attorney David Delaney, Rockwell took McNealy’s agreement with Vu as a second to his motion, and the motion passed unanimously. The 10-month calendar and the Juvenile Detention Center calendar also passed unanimously. 

Board member comments

During Board Member Comments, Vu said he was “very concerned about the new federal guidelines that have come out, threatening our funding when it comes to a lot of things, and… I feel like at least the board needs to be briefed on the potential impacts that has – and especially when the Department of Education is already going into certain school districts and investigating them, and I feel like we just need to take that and figure it out now so we don’t have a massive loss of funding.”

Vu also pointed out that the board had not publicly presented the Auditor General’s Operational Audit that was received in October and had eight findings. Vu quoted from a Florida statute that says if an audit contains a significant deficiency or material weakness, the board shall conduct an audit overview during a public meeting, describing the corrective actions to be taken and a timeline for completing those actions. Superintendent Kamela Patton said she would put it on a future agenda. 

Vu also asked for a technology plan. Among other examples, he said the students are given laptops “that don’t even keep a six-hour charge.”

Charity Camps added, “I would just like to say, with the school computers, it is kind of hard to learn off of those things. I would say they’re slow. They’re slow to process information back to us. And with the Wi-Fi connection, I know it can be hard to have thousands of computers on the same connection, but sometimes it shuts off and then shuts back on, and then it messes up our schoolwork. So I would like to ask you guys to maybe reconsider something with the computers, because it is hard to learn off of them. And also, one more thing with the screen – I think the screen is very dim, and with students who have glasses or who are hard of seeing, it is hard to see the words, or they can become very blurred and very hard to see different colors.”

Patton asked whether Camps’ laptop is one that is five years old and due to be replaced, but Camps said she just got it this year: “This one’s brand new.” Camps added, “What the battery life says on the computer is inconsistent. It says it maybe has, like, 20 more minutes, and it shuts off maybe a minute later.”

Rockwell said she had heard from teachers that sometimes during class-wide assessments on the computer, the Wi-Fi disconnects students and resets their tests back to the beginning.