Prior to the meeting erupting into a protest led by advocacy group Freedom Inc., opponents of EROs said during public testimony that the presence of the officers at East, La Follette, Memorial and West high schools makes students of color and other student minority groups fearful.

Considering the openly racist officer who was picked up from early retirement to be entrained into the Town of Madison police force this year, this doesn't sound like an unreasonable concern, tbh. There may also be a fear of these officers being a conduit through which ICE extracts the children of suspected undocumented immigrants in their covert activity within the city - there should be a system in-place to prevent this as well. It doesn't mean that the program needs to be scrapped, but some consideration of the issue seems warranted, and if there is no plan in-place, then perhaps the program shouldn't be adopted until the next budget cycle and a plan can be implemented in the interim.