What happened when a tiny school district refused to ‘bend the knee’ to Trump and ICE

In Winooski, Vermont, where more than a third of children are English learners, a school superintendent is taking a stand to protect immigrant students On an April morning at Winooski high school, the day started with a writing prompt: Do you feel safe in school? Why or why not? The students – whose families hail from across the globe and speak Arabic, Nepali, Spanish, Somali and more – wrote their responses before reading them aloud. “I feel safe in school because I saw the school doors are locked every time,” one student said. “ICE can’t come in,” said another. The sense of security students feel in this multilingual learner class at the Vermont high school is hard-won. Since the start of the second Trump administration, the federal government has investigated schools for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, rescinded a policy protecting students on school grounds from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests and threatened school districts with the loss of federal funding. Administration officials have also encouraged states to challenge a decades-old supreme court decision guaranteeing undocumented students’ right to public schooling. While ma