Letter to the Editor: Legislation should support DEI School Resource Officer training
Legislation should support schools in reviewing the proper training of their School Resource Officers (SRO). One of the reasons this needs to occur is the disproportionate statistics surrounding students of color and students with disabilities. In Vermont, students with disabilities and students of color tend to be the minority. They are represented disproportionately with a high rate of arrest and referrals to law enforcement. Students with disabilities make up 13% of the Vermont student population but represent 36% of school arrests and 37% of referrals to law enforcement. There is limited training that is offered for school resource officers around dealing with students with disabilities as they often come into the position directly after being a regular on duty officer. Also in Vermont, according to RDC data from 2015–2016, Black students had an arrest rate of 38 per 10,000 students, which was 5.4 times higher than that of White students. This data also shows that while Black students only make up 3% of Vermont student population, they represent 13 percent of school arrests and nine percent of referrals to law enforcement.
Training can help SROs to recognize a trend in their arrest rate and referrals and think about how they could combat the statistic. As officer Jason was one of my SROs at Winooski school, I got to see how the training that Winooski pd gives their officers tools to hand SRO work. The Winooski school SRO has always been approachable and able to help you as the SRO has been trained In foundations of school based law enforcement, violence victimization and threat response, health and wellness. This is proof with the proper training school Resource officers can combat the disproportionate statistic surrounding black students and students with disabilities.