Boston Public Schools is updating its policy on sharing student data with law enforcement after coming under fire for filing reports made available to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but opponents say the new terms don’t offer much improvement.
The updated policy “draws a bright line” between school discipline matters and criminal matters, Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said in a media roundtable hosted at city hall on Thursday.
BPS filed at least 135 student incident reports since 2014 that were made available to ICE via the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, creating a “school-to-deportation pipeline,” according to Lawyers for Civil Rights, which sued BPS over the issue.
“We really do not want our students coming to school worrying about anything other than, you know, their education,” Cassellius said.
The proposal limits the amount of information included in a student directory, implements data-sharing training for staff and says Boston School Police reports can’t be created solely to document student conduct for discipline.
Local education advocacy groups including Student Immigrant Movement and Unafraid Educators said they started working with BPS on the new policy in November, and were “blindsided” by Thursday’s proposal.
Valeria Do Vale, lead coordinator of SIM, said the organization was not informed of Thursday’s press conference nor had they seen the “vague” proposal that was given to the press.
“I feel we were 100% blindsided,” said Do Vale. She said the current proposal doesn’t include many of the key points outlined in an original draft.
Lena Papagiannis, co-chair of Unafraid Educators, said the “bright line” mentioned by Cassellius isn’t bright enough.
“We wanted to see a policy that would say, for example, that a student who had an outburst in class would not then be reported to law enforcement for some kind of criminal behavior and we don’t see that in the policy,” said Papagiannis.
Janelle Dempsey of Lawyers for Civil Rights said, “City, school, and police officials may claim that they do not share student information with ICE via the BRIC, but not even the ‘policy’ affirmatively says that.”
Jessica Tang, president of Boston Teacher’s Union, said the union is reviewing the new policy and “there will be additional steps that need to be taken.”
Boston City Councilor and Education Committee Chair Annissa Essaibi-George said, “I believe we need to have very clear definitions about public safety threats vs. disciplinary matters.”
The proposed updates will be presented to the Boston School Committee on March 18 followed by a public comment period.
