Student Research Spotlight - Alice Romo
Why OISE and the Educational Leadership and Policy Program?
Alice Romo is a PhD Candidate in the Educational Leadership and Policy (ELP) program at the Department of Leadership and Higher Adult Education with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. Alice knew about OISE’s high-ranking reputation as a faculty in education. She wanted to be challenged and connected to change makers in education. As someone who already had a background in socio-legal studies and policy analysis, the Educational Leadership and Policy program seemed to be the right fit. She also looked for programs at OISE with faculty members who use quantitative methods and publicly announced that they were looking to supervise more doctoral students.
Why I Love My Program: Shaping my Research Identity
What Alice values the most in the ELP program is the flexibility to build her own research identity that is both innovative and intellectually rigorous. Her work takes on a critical quantitative approach, bringing together methodological traditions that are not often combined and that can be seen as operating within different research paradigms. This has driven her to navigate complex theoretical and methodological tensions throughout her doctoral journey. These experiences have shaped her as a junior scholar to develop intellectual confidence and resilience in standing behind her work while remaining open to critique. Her coursework, mentorship from her supervising committee, and encouraging spirit from her peers have allowed her to pursue this academic path in a way that feels both meaningful and impactful.
Leadership, Collaboration, and Scholarly Development
Alice is a two-time recipient of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship and served as Vice President of Finance with the LHAE Departmental Student Association for several years. These experiences opened doors to research collaborations, co-authorship opportunities, and valuable insight into navigating doctoral studies. She has also taken on guest lecturing opportunities and led research workshops.
Alice was also awarded funding to organize a graduate student led conference at U of T titled “#PoliceFreeSchoolsEverwhere Conference – A Call to Action for Graduate Students, Community, Educators and Beyond.” The full-day conference was successfully held on September 18, 2021, and highly praised by community activists, participating teacher union representatives, and scholars. The event had the support and included panelists from Black Lives Matter Toronto, Freedom Schools Toronto, Advancement Project from the US, teacher union representatives, current scholars from the US and Canada with findings on the effects of School Resource Officers and local activist researchers on policing black lives, such as Robyn Maynard.
Doctoral Research
Alice’s doctoral thesis is titled Handcuffed in the Hallway: Effects of Police in Schools on Suspensions and Arrests. Her research focuses on the effects of School Resource Officers (SRO) in schools and advocating for police-free schools across Canada.
Ontario Bill 33 was recently passed and requires all provincial school boards to implement the SRO program wherever the programs are offered to schools in the city. This new bill has made this study very urgent and timely. Alice’s research draws from theories of the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) and its intersection with education, also known as the School to Prison Pipeline or School-to-Prison Nexus, to understand the increased rates of punitive exclusionary discipline with the use of SROs and the racial disparities accompanying. She hypothesizes that the removal of the SRO program in the TDSB is associated with a decrease in suspension rates and school-related arrests, in comparison to neighbouring school boards that continue to use the SRO program.
Research Contributions at OISE
Alice has worked on a chapter with Professor Julius Haag titled “School Safety for Whom? School Discipline and Policing Racialized Youth in Schools” for Kelly Welch’s (Eds.) book Research Handbook on Race, Crime, and Justice. Alice has also worked as a research assistant on Professor Anna Katyn Chmielewski’s project ‘Trends in Socio-economic, Ethnic and Gender Sorting among Schools in Toronto, 2006-2017’ as well as the “School Choice and School Segregation in Ontario: Using Large-Scale Geo Data to Uncover Educational Inequalities” project under the supervision of Professor Anna Katyn Chmielewski and Professor Elizabeth Dhuey.
Research, Teaching, and Community Engagement Beyond OISE
Alice continues to lead tutorials in Introductory and Intermediate Quantitative Methods as a Teaching Assistant for the Department of Sociology, incorporating open-source datasets from the Toronto Police and other datasets on her own research interests in her lesson plans wherever possible.
Alice is currently working on a paper with Professor Karen Robson at McMaster University on “Examining Inequity in Outcomes for Latin American Students in Toronto” as well as “Exploring the Latine/o/x Education Diaspora in the US and Canadian K-12 Schooling Context” with Professor Frances Contreras at the University of California for an International Handbook of Latines and Education: Critical Issues and Perspectives from Pan-America under contract with Cambridge University Press.
Alice has also taught as a course instructor and is a part-time faculty member at Sheridan College in the Faculty of Applied Health & Community Studies. Alice continues to be actively involved in decolonizing, abolitionist, anti-racism, and liberatory initiatives in Toronto. She served as the elected Ward 7 representative on the Parent Involvement Advisory Council of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) for 5 years and was on the TDSB Latinx Special Task Force.
