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 Impact of COVID-19 on School Safety Research - Roundtable Discussion, NIJ Virtual Conference on School Safety

February 16, 2021
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                  NIJ Virtual Conference on School Safety
On February 16-18, 2021, the National Institute of Justice hosted the Virtual Conference on School Safety: Bridging Research to Practice to Safeguard Our Schools. This video present a roundtable discussion from the conference.
  
  
          Transcript
>> Welcome, everybody, to this session's roundtable discussion at the School Safety Conference.

This is on the impact of COVID on School Safety Research.

I welcome you all here today and thank you for coming.

My name is Nadine Frederique.

I am with the National Institute of Justice.

I'm a Senior Social Scientist there and have been working in school safety for several years.

Today's roundtable is going to be facilitated by my friend and colleague, Dr. Anthony Peguero.

Dr. Peguero is a Professor of Sociology and Criminology in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics and the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University.

He's also the Director of the Laboratory for the Study of Youth Inequality in Justice.

So in a moment, I'll turn it over to Anthony; but before then, just a couple of reminders.

We are going to be using - you can participate in person in this session.

So if you want to turn on your cameras, that would be great so we can have an engaging discussion.

You can unmute yourselves, but we do ask that people to keep yourselves muted when you're not speaking just to cut down on that background noise.

Also, this session is going to be recorded; and so we want to be able to let you know that ahead of time and so people can go back to listen to the recording and the discussion at a later date.

So without further ado, I'm going to hand this over to my colleague, Anthony Peguero.

>> Thank you, Dr. Frederique, for that introduction.

I guess I should disclaim that this is my first semester here at Arizona State University.

We've only been here two weeks - three weeks - staying in temporary housing as our home gets remodeled.

So this is a whole new setup for us, and I appreciate your patience and our two dogs in the background as well that I'm sure you're going to hear from time to time.

So on this particular roundtable - and I've been seeing other roundtables at this conference, and I have to admit this is my first virtual roundtable.

So one of the thing I wanted to talk to Nadine about as she was organizing this conference was our experiences.

So I want to pull this up real quick, the general ideas of the way I envisioned what I thought this roundtable would be about.

So there's two ways that I was thinking about it and two ways that for me really got me thinking about who am I as a scholar, which is something - of any of you who know me, that's something I think about often.

But when it comes to being on different multiple projects, as soon as March came around with not only thinking about COVID but also the protests and the civil unrest surrounding racial equity around George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, it really created a shift, I guess, two ways.

I mean, the most immediate shift for me, and I think for a number of my colleagues, is how do we get this job done; and how do we conduct research? How do we even think about going into schools with travel lockdowns? But also us working from home, the inequities that clearly emerged amongst our teams and our research teams when it came to people who had children at home trying to get work done.

For me, the disparities/inequities and the ways and perspectives of being in the Academy where people still need to get research done/published, do all these different things, and thinking about tenure and promotion and promotion but also universities under this budget crisis starting to think about, well, go get more grant money.

But then at the same time, how are we supposed to submit grants when we don't even know when we're going back into schools and how to think about going back into schools? But also, even with my think tank colleagues across different institutions, the idea of productivity still had to be established in terms of working from home.

I mean, there were a couple of moments while we were having these team meetings, which we have - you know, we're meeting face-to-face, people working at home out of their garages with multiple kids at home and at the same time the inequities with how COVID is impacting so many different number of us on the research team and trying to accommodate for that in terms of family members who are getting sick, as well as the idea of even for myself struggling with the number of family members but also colleagues and friends that the initial images of how it seemed like New York was under assault under COVID.

So all these things were - and the people that I knew who had passed from COVID really put a real shift in not only how to think about work as a scholar during these times, but also the other aspects - those two things of whenever - I put a question at post COVID because I don't even know when that's supposed to happen, and I'm not even sure what's the benchmark for that.

But I mean, these are things where I know for us like even how to think about school safety.

And we were still holding meetings and were still meeting with school administrators, teachers.

There was still us trying to figure out how do we collect data, like virtually, in terms of - and then of course thinking about even the areas, and I think this is probably for many of us, where they've been impacted significantly harder because these are disadvantaged communities, the schools that we're going into.

They're struggling with just trying to figure out schooling, employment, health.

What was really interesting to me is like there's a number of colleagues or number of institutions that thought, well, just move forward as if nothing is going on.

Then the other end of the continuum is, well, no, this is central and core to not only what school safety means; but it's going to reshift and dramatically change how we think about even the concept of safety at schools to more of a public health.

Like how do we even think about security and safety when there's a pandemic going on? So because of that, that's why I approached Dr. Frederique with this and for us to have that kind of discussion surrounding these things - not only us as scholars but also, as scholars, as researchers/practitioners, how do we think about this in terms of moving forward not only with COVID but of clearly thinking about racial equity and especially how so many of the sites we are engaged with are disadvantaged.

So I wanted to have that discussion.

So I could pull teeth and call on people if necessary because I do see everybody's names on this.

I'll stop the share now too.

So, I mean, what are other people thinking about this? I'm going to call on Morrie because he and I and our teams have had these kinds of discussions in the past because it's the same with them.

>> Can I jump in really quick? I just had a thought to share really quick.

>> Mm-hm.

>> I think your point about how we've pivoted or how different people approached sort of like pivoting to this new world, doing things remotely and virtually, on one hand it's been great to see that people have been trying to figure out the virtual stuff, trying to have care and sensitivity to how that goes.

But I think what - so for us at NIJ, we've been working remotely since March 13th.

But the challenge and the thing that I have noticed is that even as we do these - we're doing this conference virtually.

We've been able to pivot in that way and try this thing new, but it doesn't replace meeting in person.

That interaction with people one-on-one, face-to-face, there is nothing that's going to replace that - and that's the feeling that you get, the camaraderie, the "we're in this together" kind of feeling.

Now, we can try and do that over Zoom, like we're doing right now; but there's still a part of it that's missing.

So I just wanted to emphasize that point.

So even as I've been thinking about our research, getting together with our colleagues, doing research together, working together, there's a part of it that's definitely missing.

>> I would just certainly concur with that.

One of the things that we've continued to do is to meet with our partners.

As you've described, Anthony, it's been a difficult shift in the sense that I remember once schools shut down here, there was a real scramble for all of us who are concerned about young people - I mean, about knowing what's happening.

In fact, I think I may have even shared with Nadine at the time that District reached out to me, like, do you know what's happening with how many kids have access to Internet and even some of that basic information.

One of the things that I feel like we did end up doing is just really kind of changing our focus in the short term to say how do we find out where young people are and what their needs are, given this new context? We have been remote for most of the academic year this year; and what I find is that, again, it just exacerbates inequities - I mean, the ones that were already there.

I think one of the things that I have found was already happening in my thinking, but even more so now, is that the conditions that young people live in are important for schools and - well, for the individual kids, but also for what happens to them in the context of school.

And I think this is also helped our District really kind of come to grips with that.

One of the things that we have as a part of our project is a survey on neighborhood safety and wellbeing.

When we went to remote, it turns out that that's probably the most complete data that the District has around the conditions that their young people are living in and experiencing during remote learning.

So it's essentially a kind of feedback of the school climate survey because it's trying to assess what are you living and experiencing outside of school? The last thing I'd say is that I also think that the District because of that has come to value more and more looking for ways to understand what's happening for their kids.

We have - at one point, there was concern about what kinds of data collection would happen this year given that everybody was remote.

It's interesting because we didn't push; I mean, we were like you've got first the job to educate young people and to try to help them be successful.

So if you're able, great; but we're not going to push on this.

It's interesting because, again, the District kind of came back and said, "No, this is one of those that we'll prioritize because of the types of information that it gives...

gives them in their own planning.

And I think that's going to be a challenge for us going forward.

I mean, one of the things that I may have mentioned is that we're also doing this in the context of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and just people really rethinking what it means to be Black in the context of an institution that hasn't always valued Blackness.

I think one of the things that we're still trying to find is ways to capture that piece, given that it has become clearly important to a significant portion of the kids that we are most concerned about in our research.

>> I'll jump in, Anthony.

How are you doing? Mike (inaudible).

>> How are you doing, Mike? >> I think we can actually look at other models of where there's significant disruptions.

I used to work for the National Center for Education Statistics; and many of our collections were disrupted after Katrina, where lots of students were just removed from whole districts.

You can look at other emergency preparedness where there's hurricanes on the coastal areas or tornadoes throughout the city, and they have significant disruptions to actual physical location of schools and their conditions and also where students end up.

There's a lot of displacement.

There's a lot of challenges with the continuity of services, if you will, to students - not only in assessments and learning, but also the services that they tend to receive, especially in vulnerable populations where it's around food security.

It's around all these other factors that are really highlighted with COVID, and COVID is a super example of that.

But for me, even thinking about the research and how that impacted large-scale studies - I just happened to work on a large (inaudible) study at that time, and a whole chunk for a sample was displaced.

And I tried to look at school effects; of course, there's problems.

So there might be some insight where people have looked at these other types of events where they had massive disruption to the traditional school model.

>> Thanks, Mike.

>> If I may, my name is Chris Harms.

I'm the Director of the School Safety Center for the state of Colorado.

So I'm not a researcher; but we're in the midst of a staff grant where we're looking at our training around threat assessments and then whether or not that training is implemented with fidelity.

And I actually see our evaluator, Sabrina Arredondo, just jumped on too.

I'm curious to find out, because we've been doing all of our training virtually, when we are finally able to get back into schools what the difference will be between the training done virtually versus the training in person.

So I think this is an opportunity to learn some new things that we didn't expect to learn during the time of the grant, but I'd have to say I'm also concerned because a lot of our data will be collected based on how many threat assessments are done.

And we know with students working remotely, that there haven't been as many threat assessments as there normally are in schools.

So I think there's some good things and some not-so-good things about having to pivot during this time.

We'll get to see.

>> Well, just to follow up, Chris, I guess for me that's also been one of the things.

And it's not just training, right? Like what are schools going to look like? There was this movement anyway prior to this of trying to have more students go online and get their education, and what does that mean? Is this going to accelerate that? Even looking at the news coming out of Chicago and how they're struggling between administrators, families, teachers, communities - like what does "going back safely" look like and what this means in terms of trying to get kids back into school; and then who's safety should we prioritize when it comes to health and wellbeing? So those are all things that I think which you sparked up.

Everybody's sparking up that.

For me, the answer is I don't know.

>> If I can share my experience for a second, which is somewhat different because I wasn't in any schools collecting data when everything shut down.

Like you know, I'm a full professor; and I've been trying for the past year to use that position of privilege in other ways.

So I've taken a step back from - I was starting a big book project, and I completely distanced from it for a good six months and doing other projects, and instead filling my time with trying to reach out to more juniors scholars and grad students and do more mentoring to help people through a difficult time.

I did voluntary foodbank much more - a more personal/less academic, I guess, sort of help because it seems more immediate; and I'm not in need of promotion or publications for advancement in the same way.

I've also, given the second enormous issue, spent a lot more time doing more public-facing presentations on harms of school policing in a voice that I have been surprised to hear dismissed the last day-and-a-half or two days by some of the presenters.

But through working with the ACLU in Delaware to help train teachers on racial bias and school punishment or op eds in the paper or other more public-facing issues.

So I'm not suggesting this is right for everybody because other people have different concerns of need for publication, promotion, and jobs and so on.

But I just from my own experience tried to use this as an opportunity to turn outward and help others.

>> Thanks, Aaron.

I know for myself, the struggle - like that's always been there.

Being a scholar of color, got pushed out of high school in New York City and trying to find that balance between being the objective researcher, the scholar, and then in moments of where there's clearly inequity and there's clearly a movement in terms of not only just racial equity but also trying to think of inequality even broadly and what's our role and responsibility.

At the same time, I can't stress enough what Morrie says.

Like we have school administrators coming to us seeking advice.

That really changes who we are.

We're not here to collect data.

We're advising, and we're trying to be consoling.

We're trying to be supportive and encouraging, trying to be as helpful as we can to get them through and give them as much information and support as possible.

And it really tested us in terms of who we are as scholars and trying to not only understand and investigate and address school safety and school violence, but also who are we in terms of trying to - I don't know if "activist" is the right word, but try to be more supportive and to be engaging as human beings in this time -- not only with the schools that we're interacting with, but even amongst ourselves and the multiple institutions that we're interacting with in terms of employers, employees, people who have families, brothers, sisters, all these things.

We're all going through this.

And I appreciate what Mike was saying in prior incidences; but the global aspect of this too - at least for myself - like having family and talking to family in Ecuador and in Germany, trying to think about how they're going through this is just like it was coming through all fronts.

And I know we all went through this - not only us as scholars, but I mean our partners in this research.

So thanks for that.

I guess for me the next - I mean, how do you all think about we're moving forward? I mean, we're at this moment; and there's a part of me - I don't know how much to get into this - but with the changing climate of racial equity supposed to being more in the central focus of everything, the idea of a transition of a vaccine starting to get rolled out but also highlights inequalities in terms of who's getting it and who has access to it.

Same thing with schools.

Different schools in different states and different districts are having their own complications in how to think about going back to schools, and communities being in the same thing.

Like, how do you see this transitional phase under a new Administration go into thinking about your own work and ultimately thinking about school safety moving forward? >> I was thinking about the same thing, Anthony; and a couple of things have come up for me.

One is thinking about are there questions that we're now perhaps in a position to both pose and answer as a result of what has happened over the past year, and a couple of ways in which my own work has kind of changed or morphed.

One of the things that we quickly realized was, again, that the inequity was built into access to Internet and various types of computer devices to be able to log on to do virtual school.

One of the things that we began - me and a few colleagues - is a kind of digital literacy kind of engagement with communities that we knew had both low access, but then even with access were having trouble figuring out how to utilize the technology in the ways that come naturally to some more privileged parts of our community.

So it just kind of reminded me of just how layered the kind of inequity is.

It's not just in kind of broad terms of financial inequity, but it's really in kind of the social regularities, the types of behaviors that people engage in, the types of places, the access to information that people have.

I think one of the things that we're now thinking about is are there some ways to be able to pull that apart so that we can be strategic and interventing going forward; that is, as I said earlier, I think safety is - at least I define it as something broader than kind of discipline referrals.

And certainly wellbeing is kind of a - it encompasses not only what's happening at school but also how well young people are able to function in their lives.

And I think this perhaps gives us another opportunity to gain insight into that piece in addition to those specific outcomes that we were looking at prior to now.

>> One perspective I've big on the take that I think touches on things that you, Morrie, and Anthony and Aaron have all spoken about is I've sort of stopped pretending that my research can or should be value-free and sort of leading into and acknowledging the fact that I approach my work from a place where I care about certain things and value certain things.

And that imbues the questions I ask and the way I seek to answer them.

I think especially being in this city where Breonna Taylor was killed, I think it's silly to approach it in any other way in my particular context of this time.

That's something I, for better or for worse, have been talking to my graduate students about too.

>> Thanks, Ben.

I mean, I don't know if there's anything in the Chat.

I haven't been noticing the Chat, Nadine, if there's something going on in there.

I'll take that as a no.

>> No, yeah, there are a couple things going on.

So I asked a question about health and wellbeing.

So we could talk about it if we want to, but just kind of the idea in the news we've been hearing about reports about increased self-harm or suicide from students and kind of wondering about just even the aspect of we know students sometimes are subject to this research, but they're also people too.

Has anyone been hearing or learning about kind of the mental health and wellbeing of students in the remote learning environment? Obviously, there's political pushes to bring students back.

There's resistance from teachers and unions, and it's a fraught kind of discussion about when is a good time.

So I was kind of wondering anyone who's been hearing about when is a good time.

So I was kind of wondering if anyone has been hearing anymore about that.

Then my colleague, Barbara (inaudible) Kelley also asked a question.

She said, "One question, if time allows, might center on how researchers with ongoing collaborations with educators help gather meaningful data to inform safe transitions for students' return to a classroom from remote learning.

So is anyone engaging on that topic that could shed some light on that? >> So I know the projects I'm working on, nobody's transitioning back yet.

I know there are school districts that are transitioning back.

And I know even in Blacksburg, they're all back.

So I think even that - all the teachers - I mean, one of the first things and I think that was what was fascinating to hear things going back in Blacksburg - and, again, that wasn't part of one of our studies or anything like that - is that teachers were really prioritized in Montgomery County to get the vaccines.

And again, it was really interesting to hear teachers talk about not necessarily being at high risk, per se, of the consequences of catching COVID; but it was clear for them that kids were going to be back in school for Montgomery County, and they had the resources to do that.

But none of the school districts I'm working with are transitioning back yet.

>> And my response to the question was we are monitoring safe Oregon tips.

We get those, part of our study, to look at the tip line.

And it was a reduction in what you would imagine in terms of the quantity of tips.

It dropped to about school level, except for cyber bullying and some levels of self-harm.

We only had a three-month window.

We knew when they had their social distancing/stay-at-home orders enacted across the 1,200 schools there.

But we're anticipating when students and staff do report, it's going to really tell us a lot about I think the discussion here about the home life, right? I mean, there's going to be a lot of surge, I kind of put it.

That's maybe not the - there's going to be a whole pent up - just like when the school tip line is adopted by a school, what we learned there is that there's a whole legacy of issues that are just kind of bottlenecked.

Then, when you have that new vehicle to report, you see a real big spike in reporting; and then it gets down to a steady state.

We might be seeing this sort of thing happening where there's a lot of things happening at home, online.

Again, we're doing a lot of stuff online; so are kids now, right? Everything happens online, and how are they using those tool differently is a real interesting question.

Whereas before, a lot of things happened online; but then you're also seeing people on the campus in schools or in the neighborhood, and you had a lot less of that.

So how should schools be prepared when students come back? You might have a lot more disorder.

You might have a lot more relationship disputes being now confronted in person or just counselors.

Maybe you all know this, but the tip lines really across country (inaudible), over 50% are around student self-harm, mental wellness, and mental illness-type issues.

So it just might be a situation where how do you anticipate what you need to handle on day one.

>> Thanks, Mike.

I know, Frank, you wanted to speak.

>> Hi, yeah, this is Frank DeAngelis.

Listen, I was principal at Columbine and still do some work with Jefferson County.

In the state of Colorado, all the elementary schools are back in person; but the high schools now and middle schools are getting ready to go back.

I think some key points - teachers unions are really playing a major part in teachers returning, and they said that the teachers are not going to come back unless they're vaccinated.

So our governor is trying to get everyone vaccinated, and they're hoping to have everybody in person.

But one of the things - and I still do a lot of work with the high schools in Jefferson County.

Some of the things that you're touching upon are so relevant.

We've seen, I think, three or four suicides since the pandemic has taken place.

The other thing - we see kids involved in crimes that was never anticipated.

Unfortunately, there were two kids at a local high school that were involved in a drug deal that went bad; and these were top honor students, kids that you would say when the warning signs aren't there.

But they ended up setting a house on fire, killing five people; and unfortunately, they set the wrong house on fire and it was the house next door.

So we're seeing principals that are dealing with things right now that they're really concerned.

One of the things that we're battling in the state of Colorado right now - and I'm a strong advocate - they really want these kids to do all the standardized testing and all of this thing, and that's the last thing on these kids' minds right now.

The mental state right now - and there's a lot of feedback for the teachers saying, "How can we give these standardized testing? There's enough pressure." So we're really trying to work with the governor.

But whoever said - I think the mental health piece is so important right now and having counselors come in.

I know one of the things that we're advocating for is unfortunately last year with the pandemic, I think most school districts had enough money in their reserves to get through.

But this upcoming year, the money is not there; and they're looking to cut.

One of the areas they're looking to cut are certain positions and counselors and things of that nature; and we said that's the last place, and the mental health workers.

And we really need to stand up.

Of course, I don't know what it's like in your states; but it comes out, well, if we have more counselors then we're going to have to cut teachers.

If we have this, then we're not going to get - so it's really tough right now making some of those tough issues.

The big issue right now in the state of Colorado, and I'm sure it's across the country, is what do we do with SROs? >> Thanks, Frank.

I mean, you bring up a really good point.

I think even with one of our sites, the notion of trying to really question the presence of law enforcement within schools has really taken center in some of the districts.

I think even that - and it's been really interesting, at least for me, to think about how many of us think like it's just a given law enforcement is going to be on schools, while a whole bunch of other people are really being critical.

It's like why do we have law enforcement at schools? And I think for me, those are the things of - moving forward, I don't know how we all - let alone NIJ - thinks about these kinds of things in terms of how do we think about school safety; and then what is that? Is it a reshift? Is it a new paradigm way of thinking about school safety, where it's more about public health; or are we still thinking about from a social control kind of an approach of thinking about what does it mean to provide a healthy environment to students - let alone the very clear porous boundaries of what a school is.

I think those are real challenges that we're going to have to face - not only as scholars but I think even our institutions and different levels of government and policies are going to have to try to approach.

>> If I can jump in, I'm Charlotte Gill from George Mason University.

To that point, I wanted to share a little bit about what we're doing in the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle with our CSSI grant because I think it really ties in nicely to what you just said, Anthony, about the sort of porous nature of schools.

So we are working on an implementation of qualitive behavioral interventions and supports with restorative practices that is happening in the neighborhood schools.

We're also trying to take out to the community further so the young people get this sort of continuity of supports and positive expectations wherever they go in the neighborhood.

So we're working with business owners.

We're working with the police department, with the community center, to sort of take that idea out into the community.

One of the things that we've seen sort of throughout COVID and with the pressure from the issues that were happening in the summer, is just really how valuable that's been in terms of bringing young people into the response to a lot of these challenges.

We've had kids in the neighborhood who have been able to connect with political community groups and deliver groceries to residents who were having trouble getting to the stores at the beginning of the pandemic.

They've been working with a local nonprofit to run sort of hot lines for information so that people in the community can call when they need to know about where to access healthcare and vaccinations and that kind of thing.

So it's really been interesting to see how when you sort of take a positive approach to sort of behavior management and setting expectations, we're really starting to see how that can sort of get it out from the schools into the community.

In terms of both the sort of national incidents with Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and others, but also some crimes that have happened locally in the neighborhoods and particularly homicides.

The restorative practices piece has really been valuable in creating a kind of community healing spaces and areas where we can use those clinicals to bring people together to sort of prove that's what's going on both nationally and locally.

So, yeah, I just wanted to share a little bit about what we were doing that kind of ties into that.

>> Thanks for that.

>> A question I have for all of you is has there been any - and I know there's safety surveys that are done for schools and things of that nature; but has there been anything else? What is the response from kids - I mean, in various areas? I think a lot of that has to do with certain cities and things of that nature and the climate and things of that nature because I think one of the things that we're looking at right now with these SROs, do kids feel safe? Do they feel that SROs are that person they can go to, an additional resource? What are the kids saying throughout the country on SROs? >> I can maybe speak to that a little bit.

I'm working on a meta-analysis right now of the impacts of SROs in a variety of different domains.

One includes their perceptions of safety at school.

We essentially as an average across the studies that have been done so far, we find essentially null effects.

I'm sure there are some studies that show maybe there's increases in perceptions of safety, some that show it's worse; but on average, there's no statistically significant effect.

I'll also mention some mixed methods work that I've done in a particular school district where we've, using surveys of elementary school students as well as focus groups with them, we found that rather than just looking at whether an SRO was present, we looked at how frequently students interact with SROs, so sort of looking at sort of dosage effect - if there's more exposure, more interaction, have a stronger influence.

And we found that while interacting more or less with an SRO had no impact on the extent to which they felt safe in school, but a lot of students did say that their SRO made them feel safer at school.

In our qualitative focus groups, one of the things that came out is that having the SRO in school sensitized the students to a certain possibility of violence at school in an environment that was otherwise very safe and crime-free.

I mean, it made them think about, oh my gosh, what could happen here? Because the SRO has been framed as this person who's supposed to make them feel safer, they say, "Yeah, they make me safer because violence is imminent," or something like that.

>> I think your question though really speaks to, again, that contextual issue.

I know our team - and Ben has been a part of these conversations as well - has been talking about the fact that young people's experience with police and perceptions of police may well be impacted by what they're experiencing outside of the context of school.

One of the questions that I think we've done just some very basic analysis with it so far - but one of the questions that we asked in our neighborhood wellbeing survey is about the trust in police.

And we know that there's some real variation across young people in their response to that.

So I would have to imagine that that would also then be reflected to some degree in their response to SROs in the context of their schools.

So, yeah, I don't think there's a single answer.

I just think about across the neighborhoods here in Nashville, there are some places where police are seen as friends; and then there are some places where police are not.

I have to imagine that that's also reflected in the context of school.

>> I mean, the work that I've done even --so I think it's really accurate what Ben and Morrie are talking about in terms of the context matter.

But I think even within an individual student, there's a really complicated relationship with SROs and law enforcement.

Some of the work that I've done are predominantly in Latino schools and high immigrant schools, and they've talked a lot about at one moment they might feel safer that their presence is on campus; but at the other moment, they're constantly in fear of teachers and SROs threatening and using deportation as a way of social control.

And this is from the same student talking about the same SRO.

So it's very complex how do SROs and law enforcement at the presence at a place where it's supposed to be about school safety but it's also about enforcement, that relationship and the idea of trust and belief of whatever that officer is supposed to be doing is very complicated and with multiple tensions.

>> I feel like the bad guy jumping in on this point because we are about out of time for this roundtable just when the conversation was getting juicy and interesting, and I'm sure a lot of people have several things to share.

But I will thank you all for your participation.

This was a great roundtable.

We touched on a lot of topics, and there's still a lot of questions.

Sabrina mentioned something in the Chat that I do want to read.

She said that she also wanted to know what schools are doing to plan for recovering from this pandemic.

How will schools deal with the mental health challenges for students, staff, and parents; delinquency and violence that may increase; academic law; school financial situations; and how will schools with disparities in these areas, especially for students of color.

So especially as we're doing our research, all these things are going to matter.

They're going to play role, and we're probably going to be learning more about them.

So thank you, everybody, for participating.

We have a 15-minute break, and then we can move on to our next breakout session.

So go back to the website and choose your breakout sessions.

Anthony, thank you so much for facilitating this conversation.

You did a great job, as usual.

We had a really good conversation.

I think we had a lot of input from everybody.

Again, if we were together, we'd be giving you a round of applause; but I will give you one (clapping).

Everybody, have a great rest of your day and thank you so much for joining us.

>> Thank you.
    
  
Disclaimer:
              Opinions or points of view expressed in these recordings represent those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Any commercial products and manufacturers discussed in these recordings are presented for informational purposes only and do not constitute product approval or endorsement by the U.S. Department of Justice.
  
Date Published: February 16, 2021
    
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