On April 12, community members filled the room at the Roaring Fork School District’s (RFSD) Board of Education meeting to express their dissatisfaction and concern with the U.S. Border Patrol’s presence with a table at the March 21 career expo held at Glenwood Springs High School (GSHS).
The perceived lack of oversight by the district and school administrators, including Roaring Fork School District Superintendent Jesús Rodríguez and GSHS Principal Paul Freeman, left many within the Latino community reeling.
Local Latino organizations, including Voces Unidas, led by President and CEO Alex Sánchez, and local representatives of a nationwide youth-led nonprofit that focuses on immigrant rights and social justice advocacy, Asociación de Jóvenes Unidos en Acción / Association of Youth United in Action (AJUA), sent out a call for action to the Latino community and allies to make their voices heard at the school board meeting.
Community members in attendance answered the call to action, many with signs stating, “No Border Patrol in Our Schools” and “Protect Our Students.”
Approximately 60% percent of the student population within RFSD is Latino. During the public comment portion of the meeting, many of the speakers expressed concerns about the negative impact the Border Patrol’s presence might have on Latino students in attendance, some of whom may have family members or friends who have experienced traumatic encounters with immigration officials.
“We expect our leaders to take responsibility, to develop a plan to heal and move forward,” Voces Unidas President and CEO Alex Sánchez told the school board. “You are either with your Latino students, or you are against your Latino students.”
This is not the first go-round for RFSD involving immigration officials.
According to a statement on the Voces Unidas website, from 2011 to 2016, the district had several incidents with “school resource officers working part-time with federal immigration agencies who deported family members of students in the district.”
Those incidents led to the school district board passing the 2016 Safe Haven Resolution (www.bit.ly/RFSDSafeHaven) that, among its tenets, states that RFSD schools “will remain safe and supportive spaces for students and community members, free from intimidation, hostility, or violence, including threat of deportation,” and that district schools will “not collaborate with immigration enforcement agencies.”
Many think the Border Patrol’s presence at GSHS was in direct violation of the Safe Haven Resolution.
Martha Nila, a 2020 GSHS graduate said during the public comment period, “I knew that students from [GSHS] were coming, and I wanted to show them that I was once like them in high school, and I will be here to support them even if I’m not in high school.”
A member of AJUA, Nila said the Border Patrol incident was unsettling. “I was pretty shocked. I went to the [GSHS] Facebook page and saw a photo of a student wearing a Border Patrol vest [while talking with Border Patrol representatives]. I was disappointed and shocked that they were so openly posting a photo like that.”
She added, “But it’s not too surprising. When I was in high school, many things were pushed under the rug, so we [AJUA] wanted to make sure that this was not one of those things.”
Voces Unidas called upon Rodríguez, Freeman and school board members to apologize for “violating the public’s trust.” Rodríguez issued a written apology the day after the incident. A joint letter of apology from Freeman and other RFSD high school principals was shared, and four out of the five school board members have apologized. Maureen Stepp, representing District C, abstained from signing the board’s apology letter.
Freeman said publicly that the new vendor organizing the career expo, Carbondale-based nonprofit YouthEntity, had not provided him with a list of presenting organizations in advance, a practice that had been in place with the previous career expo organizer.
However, Nila does not accept Freeman’s initial explanation. She said, “He is the principal of the school, so he should have had good enough communication to know what’s going on in his school. It just doesn’t make sense.”
The career expo incident garnered media attention on the Front Range with news reports by the CBS News Denver TV network and in the Denver Westword newspaper.
Nila told The Sopris Sun, “I appreciate the apologies, but I believe this incident shows what has been ignored for years. It’s clear that some adults don’t have proper education on Latino concerns.”
Sánchez and others within the Latino community want to see the Safe Haven Resolution enacted into district policy, with hopes that in doing so, the district supports its Latino students.