Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS) recently passed a resolution to ultimately provide guidance to the district on interactions with law enforcement agencies for its students.

As a public school district, KPS is legally required to enroll all students and protect their personal information regardless of the student’s citizenship status.

The resolution states in part that the school board “believes that it is important to establish protocols for district administration and staff to address court orders, search warrants, subpoenas, visits and/or inquiries from federal, state or local law enforcement agencies that may be seeking access to or information from the district's students.”

Truth Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) Kalamazoo shared on social media that the resolution was led by Tandy Moore, a member of the KPS Board of Education and the lead for TRHT Kalamazoo’s Separation Design Team.

“Every child deserves the right to feel safe at school,” Moore told CMF. “The looming threat of detention, deportation and separation from loved ones - parents, family members, friends - is ever-present in the lives of many of our schoolchildren, and directly impacts their ability to learn.”

KPS now plans to review district policies and implement administrative guidelines for district administration and staff on how to handle situations that may involve its students and their families.

“This resolution is not a silver bullet that eliminates that threat but acknowledging the rights of all of our students and their families to safe access to public education, and holding district leadership and staff accountable for upholding those rights, is an important step,” Moore said.

TRHT is a comprehensive, national and community-based process developed by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to plan for and bring about transformational and sustainable change, and to address the historic and contemporary effects of racism. Kalamazoo is one of four TRHT sites in Michigan.

TRHT Kalamazoo shared that within its Separation Design Team, separation examines ways to address segregation, colonization and concentrated poverty in neighborhoods to ultimately ensure equitable access to housing, education and jobs.

“My hope is that this resolution is only the beginning of an ongoing conversation around the ways children experience harm in a society that marginalizes so many, and that we continue to seek out ways that our institutions can act with intention to dismantle the hierarchy of human value.”

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