Community urges Red Clay to adopt protections for undocumented students; board to revisit committee policy 09/2004

Several community members used the Red Clay Consolidated School District public-comment period on Feb. 12 to press the board for stronger, written protections for students with undocumented family members and to ask the board to reopen discussion of how its policy-review committee operates.

James Taylor, a community member who spoke during public comment, called on the board to adopt "an official policy of noncooperation with ICE raids on school property," saying the district should be "safe havens and temples of learning, not places where some children are forced to grow up with the constant threat of losing their parents." Taylor acknowledged potential federal consequences but said the board should act "in the interest of the rights and dignity of all the students and families in the Red Clay School District, but especially those with undocumented family members." He invoked Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s phrase "an inescapable network of…