Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
Last year, Winooski became a sanctuary school district, citing a growing lack of safety for immigrant students.
The rest of Vermont may follow in the Onion City’s footsteps after the introduction of S.227, a bill that would adopt many of the district’s sanctuary school policies statewide.
“We decided to put together a bill that would ensure that schools were sensitive spaces,” Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick, D-Chittenden-11, the bill’s co-sponsor, said in an interview with Community News Service. “A lot of what’s in this bill is actually modeled after what Winooski School District did.”
Gulick said S.227 would consider school buildings “sensitive spaces,” places where government agents wouldn’t be allowed to enter without a warrant.
She stressed that now, more than ever, it is important to “adopt policies that make it very clear what the protocol is in the event that there is intrusion by government agents.”
Winooski School District Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria was at the forefront of the sanctuary school policy passed in early 2025, explaining it as a way to “prepare for aggressive policies against many of our families.”
Chavarria is a U.S. citizen, originally from Nicaragua. Last summer, he was detained at the Houston airport for six hours and has been an outspoken advocate for immigration protection ever since, especially following the recent detention of Winooski students by ICE.
After he received pushback on the policy, Chavarria “made a personal decision that as a leader, (he) would not be complacent with that censorship,” he told Community News Service.
As of today, Winooski is the only Vermont school district with a sanctuary school policy in place. But S.227 aims to give more protections to students across the state.
As it stands, “most office assistants would not know what to do or what to ask of a federal agent requesting entry into a building,” according to Chavarria.
S.227 aims to create uniform, statewide protocols for interacting with government officials such as ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and border patrol agents. For example, the bill says the superintendent would have the lone authority to admit immigration authorities into classrooms, cafeterias, playgrounds and other “nonpublic” spaces.
Rebecca Callahan, professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Vermont, said she has high hopes for the bill, but she also fears there will be major pushback.
“I understand that there are tensions between how much this will cost and its implementation,” she told the Senate Committee on Education on Feb. 12. “I’m hopeful, however, that this is something we can do to protect our students.”
Callahan provided research showing the effect immigration raids have on students. A 2022 study she cited, for instance, noted a 400% increase in immigrant student absences after a raid in Hendrickson, Tennessee. The study also found an increase in substance use disorder, sexual abuse and suicide attempts among students following the raid.
“The probable pushback that this bill will have with school districts across the state is that this only covers a minority of students because there’s so few of them in the state,” Chavarria said. “People could argue that the impact on many school districts would be zero.”
Despite the potential controversy, Charvarria said all students deserve to feel safe and welcomed in their learning environment.
“It’s a type of segregation, saying we have protections over here, and we don’t have protections over here,” he said. “A second grader who’s not able to play with the friend they made just last week because they got deported – this has a ripple effect on all of our communities.”