The Martha’s Vineyard public schools system is updating its school safety policy to include a protocol for federal inquiries into the immigration status of students and their families.

Superintendent Richard Smith said he and school principals met Jan. 16 with immigration attorney Annelise Araujo, of Araujo and Fisher in Boston, who is advising the Island administrators on their legal rights and responsibilities.

“If Department of Homeland Security or ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] shows up at our schools... what type of order compels us to open our doors?” Mr. Smith said, at the all-Island school committee meeting that night.

Without going into further details in the public meeting, Mr. Smith said campus administrators are being trained on the current laws protecting students in school and each campus will have a primary contact person for federal agencies.

“[We] will have protocols in case the Department of Homeland Security or ICE comes to our schools looking for information or anything else they may do,” Mr. Smith said.

The school committee discussion Jan. 16 did not make any allusions to changes at the federal government, but came just days before newly-inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order that called for “[r]emoving promptly all aliens who enter or remain in violation of Federal law.”

The Trump administration also has revoked a former ICE policy that barred immigration agents from making arrests at schools, hospitals, shelters and other places people receive essential services.

The Vineyard’s existing Safe Schools Resolution, approved in 2017, already states that it covers all students equally, all-Island school committee chair Amy Houghton said during the Jan. 16 meeting.

“The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, the Edgartown School, the Oak Bluffs School, the Tisbury School, the West Tisbury School, the Chilmark school and the Martha’s Vineyard charter school [are] safe zones for the educational rights of all students, regardless of immigration status,” Ms. Houghton said, reading from the document.

“We want to make sure that that parents and the community know that this [policy] exists,” she said.

The resolution extends to the entire school community, Mr. Smith said.

“The Safe Schools resolution is primarily for our students, but it does also apply to families and it applies to staff,” he said.

“The work that we’re going to do is to enforce the policies that we have, the laws that are in place that protect the educational and privacy rights of our children and their families,” Mr. Smith said, citing the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which gives parents the right to keep some of their children’s personal information from being released by schools.

The new safety policy for Martha’s Vineyard schools should be ready for the all-Island committee to review at its Feb. 20 meeting, Mr. Smith said.