Chalkbeat

Amid Chicago’s migrant influx, one school is trying to help newcomer students navigate trauma

2023-10-27T19:24:21+00:00

An hour before dismissal on a recent Friday afternoon, eight Brighton Park Elementary School students huddled in a classroom with Jennifer Moorhouse, a teacher who works with English language learners.

They were there for a voluntary, biweekly support group run by Moorhouse and Stephanie Carrillo, a school counselor, for students grappling with the upheaval of immigration and the adjustment to a new country, new city, and new school.

She asked the children — a mix of sixth through eighth graders who had recently arrived in Chicago as part of an influx of migrant families — to share the best and worst part of their week.

One boy said the best thing was that his family had moved to a new house. Another child looked up, her hair slightly covering her face. She shrugged her shoulders and struggled to come up with a worst moment.

That’s OK, Moorhouse said in Spanish, she doesn’t have to have a low point.

The girl then added, “No mejor,” meaning there was no high point either. After a moment of silence, the whole group burst into laughter.

These students, who arrived in Chicago between last year and this year, are among the more than 20,000 newly arrived migrants in Chicago since last August, with many fleeing from Central, South American and African countries experiencing political and economic turmoil, according to city officials.

Chicago Public Schools does not track immigration status and has not shared how many migrant students have enrolled in schools. But the district has pointed to clues of an increase, including 7,800 more English learners enrolled this school year, compared to an annual average increase of 3,000 such students.

As of mid-September, 2,250 migrant children were housed in the city’s shelters, according to records from the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications that were obtained by Chalkbeat.

Educators have raised concerns that many Chicago schools don’t have the resources, such as staff, to provide new migrants with the right language instruction, recently pleading with the state to send more help.

But there are also questions about whether newcomers have the social-emotional support they need at school. These students have potentially endured dangerous journeys to the United States, on top of the stress of leaving their homes behind for shelters or other temporary living arrangements in a foreign place.

That latter concern led Moorhouse to launch the support group at Brighton Park last year after she met a migrant student who was showing signs of trauma. The student, whom Moorhouse met in January, didn’t want to be in school and sometimes, the student’s body would shake uncontrollably, she said.

At one of the sessions Moorhouse held, the student shared a personal story about his journey to the United States. Afterward, Moorhouse recalled, the student said: “My chest isn’t hurting. I can breathe.” Moorhouse felt it was a sign of healing.

In some ways, Brighton Park is well-positioned to host this support group. As a community school, it partners with a nonprofit organization to provide wraparound services for its students. Carrillo, the school counselor who helps Moorhouse with the support group, works with the school on behalf of its partner nonprofit, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. Brighton Park Elementary’s community schools funding also helped to pay for the training on the model that the support group is based on, according to Cecilia Mendoza, the school’s assistant principal.

The model is known as STRONG, or Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups, which focuses on teaching children how to understand and cope with their stress before they’re invited to share more personal details about their journey to the United States, if they choose.

It’s unclear how many schools have specific support groups for migrant students like the one at Brighton Park. About $35 million of the district’s budget this year was allocated for social-emotional curriculum, behavioral health supports for students, and additional social workers and counselors, according to a district spokesperson.

This year, Moorhouse and Carrillo are starting with the basics.

On that recent Friday afternoon, in the classroom where Moorhouse gathered with eight of her students, bright orange and blue strips of paper on the dry erase board described concepts of melting and freezing in English and Spanish: “Que le pasa al chocolate que se deja al sol?” (What happens to chocolate left in the sun?).

A plastic cupboard sat against the wall, filled with shoes, socks, and clothing donations Moorhouse had collected through her Amazon Wishlist. Sheets of paper taped to the wall have words of affirmation in both languages: “Tus emociones son validas.” (Your feelings are valid.)

A classroom for English learners at Brighton Park Elementary School has brightly colored phrases translated in English and Spanish on the dry erase board.

After their icebreaker, Moorhouse passed around crayons and a worksheet with the outline of a human body. She explained that stress can cause physical pain and asked her students to color in the part of their bodies that hurt when they are stressed.

“Entonces para mi, cuando yo estoy estresado, mi estómago me duele,” she told the students, explaining that her stomach hurts when she’s stressed.

One girl, wearing a pair of sneakers donated through the Amazon wishlist, used a green crayon to fill in the top of the head. She colored the shoulders with a green-yellow.

When Moorhouse asked students to share, one boy said stress gives him a headache, and then he feels like throwing up. A low “hmm” spread through the group, as if others recognized the boy’s feeling.

At 2:35 p.m., about halfway through the session, the students received a new worksheet. This one had a large triangle on it, and each point represented something different: pensamientos, sentimientos, y acciones. Thoughts, emotions, and actions. Moorhouse wanted the students to reflect on how a thought may lead to a feeling, which ultimately leads to an action.

After a couple minutes jotting down their thoughts, the students shared their responses. One boy smiled as he described an example: When he’s talking to other students and they suddenly begin speaking in English, he feels as if he’s been removed from the conversation.

“How does that make you feel?” Moorhouse asked him in Spanish.

“Bad,” he replied.

“What’s your action?” Moorhouse responded.

“I walk away,” he said.

That day, Mendoza, the assistant principal, was peeking in.

“I don’t think students or people in general sometimes realize the effect that has on others who only speak one language,” Mendoza said later. “So that really stuck with me, and I thought about how we could have that conversation, perhaps, with the students … because they might not be aware that they’re doing that.”

Moorhouse then presented a challenge for the students: How can they change their thinking about a situation, in order to elicit better action? One boy gave the example of taking a hard math test that he doesn’t know the answers to, so instead, he asks to go to the bathroom.

He was stumped when Moorhouse asked him to think of a better action. She opened the floor to the group, but no one came up with an answer good enough for Moorhouse. When she pressed them to think harder, they hit on a solution: He could ask the teacher for help — for understanding the exam, or perhaps even asking to take it another day.

With about 15 minutes left, Moorhouse and Carillo passed around stress balls shaped like bee hives. They asked the students to squeeze hard and pretend that they were squeezing out the juice.

A couple of kids laughed as they squeezed their fists and then released pressure.

Around 2:55 p.m. Moorhouse handed out a blank calendar worksheet. For the following week, students would be expected to log how they’ve practiced relaxation strategies, such as grabbing an ice pack from the nurse or using a stress ball, when feeling stressed. One student shared that drawing helps.

It was time for dismissal. The students didn’t run out the door. They stayed back to chat with each other. A few grabbed extra bags of Skinny Pop.

As the weeks go on, Moorhouse and Carrillo will meet individually with each student to assess whether they want to talk more about their personal experiences of coming to the U.S. and what would be appropriate to share with the other students.

In those conversations, students may show signs of needing more individual counseling provided by the school, such as bursting into tears while recounting a story, Carrillo said.

Some students take a while to open up, so it’s unclear how much they’ll participate going forward, Moorhouse said. One of those quieter students is the child who had shared that there was no highlight or lowlight of her week. During the hourlong session, this student gradually opened up a little more.

And when most of the other children left at the end of the day, that student stayed behind. She wanted to talk some more one-on-one with Moorhouse.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

As Chicago’s shelter rule for migrant families takes effect, here are three student rights to know

2023-11-27T12:00:00+00:00

Chicago educators and advocates are concerned about how Mayor Brandon Johnson’s new 60-day limit for shelter stays for migrant families will impact attendance and stability for migrant students.

The new rule comes as the city has struggled to house migrants. More than 22,000 have arrived from the Southern border since August 2022, many fleeing economic and political upheaval in Central and South American countries. City and state officials have promised to boost efforts to help families get resettled and find more permanent housing, a commitment that comes just as a state-operated rental assistance program will no longer apply to newly arrived immigrants who are entering shelters, Block Club Chicago reported.

About 50 families have already received the notices, and another 3,000 will get them on Dec. 4.

Advocates said losing shelter could mean more absences among migrant students who are homeless — formally known as students living in temporary living situations. That designation includes children in shelter, living doubled up with another family, or living in a public place. As of Oct. 31, average attendance rates this school year for homeless students are 5 percentage points lower than their peers with permanent housing, according to Chicago Public Schools data shared with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

School stability is related to academic success. A 2015 study that examined New York City students found that children who transferred schools were more likely to be chronically absent or miss at least 10% of their school days. Chronically absent students who were also homeless were three times more likely to repeat the same grade than homeless students who missed fewer than five days of school, the report found.

“We’re talking about kids who have been around for two months, who have gotten into a routine, maybe made some friends, have some sense of control finally, where they can get two hot meals a day — we’re talking about sending those families back to the bus landing spot,” said Gabriel Paez, a bilingual teacher on the West Side, of the mayor’s new rule.

Sixty days is a “very short time” to find housing, especially for newcomers with language barriers who are dealing with asylum cases or have not been authorized to work yet, said Patricia Nix-Hodes, director of the Law Project of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

If families don’t have permanent housing lined up, they can return to the “landing zone” — the downtown area where most buses first drop off newcomers — and can request a new shelter placement. Families can stay in their shelter under “extenuating circumstances,” such as a medical issue, if there is extreme cold, or if they’ve obtained a lease with a move-in date that starts later than when they must leave shelter, the mayor’s office said.

A spokesperson for the mayor declined to comment. In a statement, a district spokesperson said it is working with the city and schools to “ensure new arrival students, who are nearly all considered Students in Temporary Living Situations (STLS), can get access to a Pre-K-12 education within our system that offers the appropriate services, including English Learner services.”

Homeless children have certain rights enshrined in federal law aimed at maintaining stability for them at school, including the ability to stay at the school where they’ve been attending.

Here are three education rights that families living in temporary housing should know about as the city’s new shelter rule takes effect:

Homeless students have the right to stay in the same school

Students living in temporary shelters who have enrolled in the local school or a nearby one are entitled to stay at the same school even if they’re forced to leave the shelter after 60 days.

This is true for any student who becomes homeless. Federal law protects their right to remain in their so-called “origin school.”

Just as any other Chicago Public Schools student, homeless students can enroll in the local neighborhood school in their new community by simply walking in. Also like any other student, they can apply to selective or magnet schools, but the deadline to apply for these schools for next academic year has passed.

Migrant students may also be referred by other city agencies, such as the Department of Family and Support Services, to receive enrollment help from the district’s central office, including at the city’s Pilot Welcome Center at Clemente High School on the West Side.

In that case, the district will enroll students based on where they live, the students’ needs — such as English language services — and “existing capacity and resources at the school.” If there are space issues at a school, the district “can assist with an alternate school assignment,” a spokesperson said.

Once 20 or more students with the same native language enroll at a school, state law requires they launch a Transitional Bilingual Education program. Such programs require instruction in both English and the native language, such as Spanish.

The district has budgeted $15 million to hire more bilingual teachers, dual-language program coordinators, and “other resources to support English learners,” a spokesperson said.

Homeless students have the right to transportation

Homeless students also have the right to receive transportation to school even if they move. And, according to CPS guidelines, their school must inform the student and a parent about transportation services. If a student finds permanent housing, they are still entitled to transportation until the end of the school year.

According to CPS guidelines, homeless students in need of transportation must receive a CTA card within three days of requesting one. Children in preschool through sixth grade can receive an additional card so that a parent can accompany them on public transit.

Students in those grades can also apply for school bus service if a caregiver can’t accompany them to school because the parent has work or education conflicts, a mental or physical disability, or the shelter won’t allow parents to leave during the hours of dropoff and pickup.

Citing a driver shortage, the district this year has limited school bus service to students with disabilities and those who are homeless. As of October, 113 homeless students qualified for busing, but it’s unclear how many of them opted instead for a financial reimbursement.

Homeless students don’t need paperwork to enroll

Schools must enroll students who are homeless even if they don’t have records normally needed to enroll, such as immunization or previous school records, proof of guardianship, or proof of residence, according to the district.

Families fleeing domestic violence or political turmoil may not have grabbed important documents, Nix-Hodes said.

It’s up to the school to “sensitively” identify that a family seeking enrollment is homeless without violating their privacy, Nix-Hodes added.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

As shelter limit for migrant families nears, NYC schools try to prepare

2023-11-29T23:37:59+00:00

New York City schools have started preparing for a massive reshuffling of students as early as next month, as thousands of migrant families face a new limit on shelter stays, education officials said during a Wednesday city council hearing.

Approximately 2,700 families have received notices since Oct. 27 that they’ll either have to reapply for shelter or find alternative housing within 60 days, according to a City Hall spokesperson. That means families will have to leave their shelters as early as Dec. 27. For families who do reapply for shelter, there’s no guarantee they’ll end up in the same site, or even the same borough.

Mayor Eric Adams has argued that the limits are necessary to relieve severe overcrowding in the city’s shelter amid an unprecedented and ongoing influx of migrants, many of whom are seeking asylum. Case workers will help families figure out next steps, according to city officials.

But educators and advocates have sounded the alarm for months that the policy could have devastating educational consequences.

Preparations are underway to try to minimize the disruptions and inform families of their rights, especially in Manhattan where the shelters are concentrated, Education Department officials said on Wednesday.

“What we’ve started to do is look very closely at where those students are located, engage principals, engage superintendents,” said Flavia Puello-Perdomo, an Education Department official who oversees students in temporary housing. “While we can’t fully control all the implications of the 60-day rules … as much as possible we’ll ensure every family is aware they have the right to stay in their schools.”

Federal law requires school districts to provide transportation for homeless students so they can remain in their schools. The city Education Department offers school buses for homeless students in kindergarten to sixth grade, and MetroCards for older kids. But arranging that transportation can take a long time, and the city’s sprawling school bus system is notoriously unreliable, according to advocates and educators.

Many families may opt to transfer rather than enduring that uncertainty and a potentially grueling commute.

One Manhattan school is getting ready to call all of its migrant families to ask if they’ve received the notices and walk them through their options, according to the principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

But the principal said no amount of preparation will prevent the massive disruptions ahead.

“It’s going to be like musical shelters,” the principal said. “All these kids who we’ve spent the last 10 months building relationships with … we’re going to break that bond.”

Schools brace for logistical challenges

During Wednesday’s council hearing on immigrant students, Education Department officials offered a glimpse at the huge logistical challenges schools and families are facing as the 60-day deadlines hit.

The first task will be figuring out which families have even received the notices and where they are headed.

Staffers who work with the newly-arrived families said it’s possible some will leave the city or find their own apartments, but others will have no option other than reapplying for shelter.

“I’ve visited the shelter near me,” said the Manhattan principal. “My assumption is that if they had a better option, they would’ve already used it.”

The Education Department doesn’t have a data-sharing agreement with Health + Hospitals, the agency that administers many of the newly-created Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers, or HERRCs, where migrants are residing. That means schools won’t get automatic updates when children transfer from one shelter to another, officials said.

It could fall largely to schools to track down families to figure out if they’ve received a 60-day notice, where they’re moving, and whether they’ll need transportation – an especially daunting challenge given many of the newly-arrived families still may not have reliable phones.

The Education Department employs roughly 100 community coordinators who work directly with families in shelters – but that’s far short of the more than 360 shelters now operating across the city, according to an Education Department official.

Delays in figuring out where families have transferred will lead to delays in arranging transportation or finding new school placements.

Families face long commutes, school transfers

Even if the communication between schools and families is seamless, families who have to leave their shelters will face the tough decision of enduring a longer commute or transferring schools.

The Manhattan principal said several families have already switched shelters, and opted to remain at the school – but their attendance has suffered.

Schools across the city are already struggling with elevated rates of chronic absenteeism and the problem is even more severe for students in shelters, over 70% of whom were chronically absent last school year. The reshuffling from the 60-day notices will likely make that worse, the principal argued.

Transportation is especially challenging from the newly-opened shelter at Floyd Bennett, a former airfield in southern Brooklyn. The emergency shelter, which officials say can accommodate 500 families, has drawn fierce criticism from advocates who say it’s inappropriate for children, and some families have refused to stay there.

Education Department officials said on Monday that roughly 195 children staying at the shelter have registered for school. But Glenn Risbrook, the Education Department’s senior executive director for student transportation, acknowledged it’s in a “transportation desert” and said the agency has arranged for a coach bus to connect families to public transportation so they can get to school.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

What’s in a name? Students at NYC’s largest school for newcomer immigrants push for change

2023-12-05T18:48:01+00:00

The name of New York City’s largest public school for immigrant students succinctly describes who it serves: Newcomers High School.

The school, located near a cluster of newly opened homeless shelters in Long Island City, Queens, has lived up to its name, enrolling perhaps more migrant students over the past two school years than any other in the city. Its roster jumped from roughly 800 two years ago to more than 1,400 now, according to Education Department records.

Often, over the school’s 30-year history, the name has served as a badge of honor, especially when Newcomers won national recognition for its academic achievement. The school is one of about 20 across the city designed to provide more targeted support and help new arrivals acclimate to life in the U.S.

But as New York City grapples with political and economic tensions surrounding the ongoing influx of migrants, the school’s student government wants a name change.

“The brand ‘Newcomers’ does not identify us any more,” Brianna Segarra, a senior and the student government president, said at a recent meeting of the city’s Panel on Educational Policy. “We are hurt by it, by all the people in the U.S. who are against migration.”

The name, she worries, “puts a target on us.”

Changing the name of a New York City school isn’t easy. It involves securing the approval of the Parent Association and principal, soliciting public comment at a community education council meeting, and getting a final sign-off from the chancellor.

Students pushing the name change at Newcomers are still in the early stages. They haven’t come up with a replacement name and haven’t yet begun the process of gathering input from all kinds of people with a stake in the school, said teacher and student government adviser Aixa Rodriguez.

Principal Elizabeth Messmann, who couldn’t be reached for comment, said in an email to staffers on Monday that the School Leadership Team, a body composed of staff, parent and student leaders, has begun discussing “rebranding the school.”

There’s also likely to be pushback.

“The fear [is] that if we change the name, will it change the character of the school?” said Rodriguez. “Are we killing the legacy of the last 30 years?”

A sweatshirt design raises questions of belonging

Student government leaders say they began considering the idea of a name change while designing the annual school-branded sweatshirt.

Demand for the Newcomers hoodie was through the roof this year.

Many new arrivals lack winter gear, and were excited to add a warm item to their wardrobes, student leaders said.

But when the student government began gathering feedback on this year’s design, they heard the same thing again and again from peers.

New York City Public Schools Chancellor David C. Banks poses for a photograph with students from Newcomers High School.

“They said the name was really big. They said, ‘I don’t want the name ‘Newcomers’” featured so prominently,” said Lindsay Abad, a senior and student government secretary who hails from Ecuador. Students worried it would make them vulnerable to “suffering a hate crime or something like that.”

The influx of migrants that began in summer 2022 and has included roughly 30,000 students has spurred bursts of generosity as well as vitriol, with protests against new shelters springing up across the city.

Students are acutely aware of that charged political climate, said Rodriguez, the teacher who advises the student government. They’ve also confronted some of it head-on.

Students confided in staff that they’ve heard insulting comments on public transit, Rodriguez said. They’ve also heard them during sports games at other schools.

“They don’t want to be associated with something that feels negative. They want to belong,” Ridriguez said. “When they’re going on a train or a bus to a game, they don’t want that attention.”

Several students also said they were hurt by a New York Post article suggesting that swelling enrollment had forced students from a school that shares the building to relocate to another campus across the street.

An Education Department spokesperson denied that claim, but the story still stung, students said.

Many Newcomers students felt the implication was “we are here occupying a space that is not ours,” said Mary Barcarse, a senior and student government chairperson originally from the Philippines.

That’s not to say the enrollment boom hasn’t posed real challenges, said Rodriguez.

Class sizes have ballooned, while class rosters are constantly in flux as new students arrive and others leave due to transient housing situations, Rodriguez said. Many of the new students are carrying significant trauma while juggling competing responsibilities like a pressure to work or care for siblings, she added.

Students say they were steered to Newcomers

Some students said the discussion about the name “Newcomers” has pushed them to reconsider a more fundamental question about educating immigrant students: whether they should be enrolled in separate schools in the first place.

The student government leaders who spoke to Chalkbeat said they didn’t feel like they had much choice about where to enroll and were pushed towards Newcomers.

“They said, ‘You’re from Ecuador, you go to Newcomers,’” Abad recounted.

There can be advantages to attending a school populated exclusively by immigrant students: classmates who can relate to your experiences, teachers who are seasoned in supporting language development, and a climate that’s inclusive and welcoming, students and staff said.

But there are also drawbacks. With fewer native English speakers, students at Newcomers said they feel like they’re missing out on critical chances to improve their English. And because the school focuses so many of its resources on language support, some students felt it offered fewer options for acceleration, electives, and specialized tracks than other high schools.

Regardless of which model works best, students said they wished they’d gotten more choice in where they enrolled. They worry that many of the new arrivals are getting funneled into a similarly narrow range of schools.

The name “Newcomers,” they argue, reinforces the idea that immigrant students only belong in one type of school, and that only one type of student belongs at schools like Newcomers.

Students also said the name doesn’t feel entirely accurate. At least 50 members of the school’s senior class were born in the U.S. and are citizens, but recently returned to the country after time abroad, according to Rodriguez.

“They feel it labels them,” she said, “in a way that doesn’t reflect every single person who walks in this door.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Migrant families and schools brace for wave of shelter evictions

2024-01-08T10:00:00+00:00

This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

Thousands of migrant families with school-aged children will begin having their time in city shelters run out starting Tuesday as the first 60-day eviction notices, which the city began passing out in October, start to expire.

Among those whose time runs out Tuesday is Joana, 38, a Venezuelan mother who asked that her last name not be used. She said in recent days she’s been having hard conversations with her 8-year-old daughter about what’s in store.

“I try to explain to her as gently as I can the reality,” Joana said in Spanish. “So she can understand why we’re leaving this place, where her school bus comes to get her, where she’s lived for a year, and where she feels like it’s part of her home.”

The shelter evictions for families with children mark the beginning of yet another city policy shift on homelessness, as Mayor Eric Adams struggles to contend with a ballooning shelter population driven largely by the arrival of more than 160,000 migrants, which cost the city $1.4 billion last fiscal year.

Through the end of December, 122,700 people were living in shelters, including over 68,300 migrants, the vast majority of whom are families with children.

Thus far only adults without children have been subject to the Adams administration’s attempts to eject migrants from city shelters. The city has limited their stays to 30 days. In order to reapply for another stint afterwards, adults must now brave long lines in the cold for hours and sleep on the floor of various waiting rooms for more than a week, with limited access to food and showers, before they can secure another cot.

To date, most families with children have been spared this kind of disruption. Adams has repeatedly said his administration’s goal is for no families with children to sleep on the streets — but exactly how family evictions will be carried out is still unclear.

Since the city unveiled its family eviction policy in October, about a third of migrant families in the city’s care have been hit with 60-day eviction notices, or around 4,800 families, a city spokesperson said.

Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for the Adams administration, said families who have nowhere else to go when their time in shelters ends will be directed to return to the Roosevelt Hotel, the city’s main intake center, to request another 60-day placement. The city will try to place families in or near the school district where kids are currently enrolled in schools, she added. No child would be forced to change schools, as is required by federal law.

But up through last week, those instructions still hadn’t been communicated to families directly in writing. Several 60-day notices distributed to families reviewed by THE CITY only said that the city would help send you to another location, and if you had any further questions you could talk to staff at the hotel. Parents who spoke with THE CITY said social workers had told them about the option to go to the Roosevelt Hotel.

Joana said that’s where she planned to do Tuesday: pull her daughter out of school for at least for the day and head to the Roosevelt Hotel to try to get another shelter placement.

“I’m trusting in God that we’ll have another place to stay,” she said in Spanish.

Mamelak reiterated Mayor Adams’ frequent plea that with 33,000 migrant children enrolled in schools since June of 2022, the city still needs more help from the state and federal governments.

“While we are grateful for the assistance from our state and federal partners, for months, we have warned that, without more, this crisis could play out on city streets,” Mamelak said. “It is crucial — now, more than ever — that the federal government finish the job they started by allowing migrants to immediately work, and to come up with a strategy that ensures migrants are not convening on one, or even just a handful of cities across the country.”

‘I have no idea what to do’

The evictions are slated to begin at the Row Hotel in Midtown on Tuesday, which has rooms for 1,000 families. Forty families will run out of time on the first day, and another 250 families will see their shelter stays expire during the first week, according to Josh Goldfein, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, who is in direct communication with city agencies on behalf of the Coalition for the Homeless.

After the Row, other families at other Midtown hotels like The Stewart, The Watson, and the Wolcott will see their time run out, expanding to around 100 families ejected per day in the coming weeks, Goldfein said.

Ahead of the evictions, residents of The Row who spoke with THE CITY described a mix of anxiety, dread, and resolve.

“The kids have already missed so much school,” said Yeisi Zerpa, a 26-year-old Venezuelan mother of four, who said she’d had to pull the kids out of school to apartment hunt ahead of her eviction date Tuesday.

“If every 60 days I’m going to leave the shelter and get back in line, that’s going to be stress all the time, the kids won’t be able to go to school,” she said in Spanish.

With the help of a kind woman she’d met while begging for change and subsequently become friends with, she’d managed to find a room her family of six would share in a Bronx apartment.

Zerpa is still waiting for her work permit to come through, and was looking for work cleaning houses, but wasn’t sure how she’d pay the rent going forward.

“I have no idea what to do,” she said, adding she was still trying to figure out if she should keep her daughters at the same school or transfer them to somewhere closer. In the weeks ahead of her eviction, she said social workers at the Row offered little guidance.

“No one has helped us to find a rental,” she added. “You ask the social worker a question and they don’t know anything. You don’t have the help of anyone there.”

City officials didn’t return a request for comment about how many people had moved out ahead of their evictions this week. But several other families who spoke with THE CITY said they had managed to secure alternative living arrangements ahead of their final days at the hotel.

Lorena Espinosa Castro, a 36-year-old mother of two from Peru, was moving out trash bags of her belongings on a recent afternoon, headed to a studio apartment in Corona that she’d rented for $800 a month through a friend. In nearly a year in New York City, Castro had managed to find work as a server in a Mexican restaurant not so far from her new apartment.

“The truth is I always wanted to get out of there,” Castro said in Spanish. “I couldn’t cook. My girls, we didn’t eat well. It’s our moment to be more independent. I fought for it.”

“The help of the government is over,” she said.

At some Manhattan elementary schools with large populations of migrant students, families have already started disappearing as the deadlines for the 60-day notices approach.

“Since about two weeks prior to the vacation, we’ve lost a lot of students,” including around 10 this week alone, said a teacher at a Manhattan elementary school that’s enrolled a large number of migrant families, including many living at The Row. The teacher spoke on the condition of anonymity and asked that the school not be named for fear of retaliation.

Watching students who have been at the school for months and built connections abruptly drop off of the school roster is wrenching, the teacher said.

“There’s something really special about watching students grow in a space and become acclimated and familiar. So it’s hard when they’re moved,” the teacher said.

Many other migrants who spoke with THE CITY ahead of their eviction dates said they hadn’t been able to find anywhere else to go and planned to return to the Roosevelt Hotel hoping for another place to stay.

Piedad, a 49-year-old mother who asked that her last name be withheld, expressed a fear that they’d be sent to the far off tents at Floyd Bennett field, where families live in a quasi-congregate setting miles from the nearest neighborhood — a concern shared by many families in recent days.

“We’re hoping, with God’s will, we’ll get another shelter, and not the tents,” she said in Spanish.

‘We’re adding to these kids’ trauma’

Since October, the city has been issuing 60-day notices to families that have been staying in shelters run by the city Health and Hospitals system for more than a year, as well as many more recently arrived families, including all those at Floyd Bennett Field.

So far, the approximately 8,800 migrant families living in shelters overseen by the city’s Department of Homeless Services, which is subject to more strict state oversight, have been spared the shelter evictions. In November, however, city officials requested permission from the state to expand the policy to those families as well, according to Anthony Farmer, a spokesperson for the state’s office of Temporary Disability Administration. As of last week, the state had still not granted that request.

Goldfein and other advocates have looked at the daily chaos unfurling outside the city’s reticketing site in the East Village and fear a similarly dire situation could await families with young kids later this week.

“We’re certainly very concerned,” Goldfein said. “We asked about that and they believe they have it under control. But we’ll see.”

Schools are also preparing for another destabilizing shuffle, the Manhattan teacher told THE CITY, as some students leave and new ones come in.

“All year is just constantly readjusting to try to catch students up, readjust the dynamics of the classroom, rebuild community,” the teacher said. “It’s a heavy load for teachers.”

One Education Department source familiar with planning for the 60-day notices called the educational impact on children would be immense. “We’re adding to these kids’ trauma,” the source said.

Unlike the Department of Homeless Services, which has a data sharing agreement with the Education Department so schools can directly look up where homeless students have been transferred too, Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs large-scale family migrant shelters, has no similar arrangement. Schools will thus be flying blind come Tuesday.

“The only thing these children have consistently in their lives is school,” the source said. “So now you’re taking them out of shelter, you’re putting them someplace else. They’re not gonna be in school for a few days easily. They have to adjust to a new environment and if they’re lucky, they figure out how to get back to that school.”

The Education Department has been recommending families bring information about their schools with them to the Roosevelt Hotel, so that they might be placed in the same borough as their child’s school.

Nicole Brownstein, a spokesperson for the Education Department, said schools had been working directly with emergency shelters, “to support all students and their families and ensure there is no gap in services, whether they transition to a new school community or choose to stay in their current school.”

The city has touted their 30-day policy for adults for reducing the number of people who return to seek another 30-day placement to just 20% of those who had their time run out.

But Goldfein with the Legal Aid Society said if the city really needed to move people around, it could reassign them directly from their current hotels, instead of sending them into a lurch of uncertainty at the Roosevelt Hotel, where it’s not clear where they’ll end up or how long it will take. He described the situation as a “logistical nightmare merry-go-round.”

“There’s a bigger question of why do you need to do this,” he said. “Do you need people to move just to harass them? To push them to move out?”

Gwynne Hogan covers Brooklyn for THE CITY.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC sends families from tent shelter to sleep on school floor during storm

2024-01-09T22:38:29+00:00

This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

Officials hastily moved hundreds of families living at the Floyd Bennett Field migrant shelter in Brooklyn early Tuesday evening as a powerful storm with wind gusts exceeding 60 miles per hour hit the city.

The families were bused to relatively nearby James Madison High School, in Marine Park, to rest as best they could in chairs or on floors. By 4:30 a.m. Wednesday morning the winds had died down and families were bused back to Floyd Bennett, according to the city’s Office of Emergency Management.

Despite that scheduled departure time, an alert sent by the school late Tuesday afternoon advised students and their parents that classes would “pivot to remote” on Wednesday.

The sudden move by the Adams administration drew ire from all sides, with homeless rights advocates and the migrants themselves decrying the disruption for families, and local parents slamming the city’s use of the public school.

People living at the field shelter made of tents described a chaotic and stressful day that included: learning of the impromptu evacuation just hours before it was slated to occur before 4 p.m. racing back to the Floyd Bennett after picking up their children from schools to try to catch the buses to Madison; and crowding in the school’s auditorium and cafeteria with hundreds of others spending the night in chairs or on the ground.

“They want us like animals sending us from here to there,” a 31-year-old mother of three from Venezuela told THE CITY in Spanish, asking that her name be withheld out of fear of retribution for speaking out. ‘’This is craziness.”

She noted that she was thankful for the help of the city for a place to stay — “but this isn’t how children and families should be treated.”

A group of migrants race into James Madison High School in Brooklyn after city officials evacuated Floyd Bennett Field during a rainstorm, Jan. 9, 2023.

In an impromptu press conference early Tuesday afternoon to announce and explain the evacuation, city Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Zachary Iscol, said the agency started notifying families at the shelter at 11 a.m that buses would take them to Madison High School that evening.

By that time many families had already left the shelter for the day for jobs and school, though word spread of the planned evacuation on WhatsApp groups.

“We are doing this out of an abundance of caution because of the high winds,” Iscol said.

Iscol said that tents shelters for migrant adults on Randall’s Island and Creedmoor Psychiatric Facility were not slated for evacuation because both had more protection from the wind and pilings dug into the ground that made them more sturdy than the Floyd Bennett location.

“It’s a really complex operation,” he added.

Spokespeople for OEM, the mayor’s office, and the city’s hospitals system, which runs many migrant shelters, didn’t respond to requests for comment immediately about the lack of cots for the migrants staying at the high school.

Critics of Mayor Eric Adams’ handling of the arrival of migrants denounced the rapid move out of hundreds of children and families.

“The need for the city to find temporary shelter for the people already in temporary shelter demonstrates that the site was not adequately set up for extreme weather on top of the hardship this isolated and inadequately serviced location, miles from the nearest neighborhood school, already imposes on its residents,” said city Comptroller Brad Lander, a regular critic of the mayor.

‘It’s overwhelming’

The evacuation Tuesday came the same day evictions began for migrant families staying in the Row Hotel in Manhattan, as part of the city’s new policy limiting shelter stays for some migrant families to just 60 days.

Around 40 families were forced to leave Tuesday, officials from the city’s Health and Hospital corporation said, with the number expected to quickly ramp up to around 100 families per day. About 4,800 families have received 60-day notices that will force them out of hotel rooms in the coming weeks, city officials said.

Maria Quero, 26, who is eight-and-a-half months pregnant with her first child, said she’d begged her social workers at the Row to let her stay until after she gave birth. She’d presented a doctor’s note to staff, she said, but was denied an extension.

Pregnant migrant, Maria, leaves the Row Hotel shelter after receiving an eviction notice, Jan. 9, 2024.

Instead she trudged across Midtown with her husband from the Row to the Roosevelt Hotel Tuesday morning to ask for another 60-day placement while hoping to still make her prenatal doctor’s appointment later that day.

“I can’t be sitting down a lot, my hips are hurting,” she said in Spanish. “It’s overwhelming, it’s really stressful.”

By that evening Quero said she’d be reassigned to a shelter in Brooklyn.

Asked about Quero’s situation at the Tuesday press briefing, Dr. Ted Long, who oversees migrant shelters run by NYC Health and Hospitals, said: “We look forward to helping Maria.

“They deserve that stability — that stability can never be in the hotel room,” Long added, speaking generally about why the city has set 60-day shelter stay limits for families. “It can only be with our help, how we get them to complete their journey.”

‘Everyone is feeling sad’

Staff at James Madison — the alma matter of both U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer — said they first learned of the plan around noon Tuesday. They were told that the migrant families would arrive after students left Tuesday afternoon and would be gone by the time school starts Wednesday morning.

“It’s an enormous logistical challenge, but if you throw enough bodies at it you can do it,” said a staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Sixteen-year-old junior Spencer Katz said students learned about the evacuation Tuesday afternoon, and most of the discussion focused on whether or not school would be canceled Wednesday.

“I was expecting some people to be racist,” Katz said, but “I was pretty pleasantly surprised by how cool everyone was about it … Every single person I know has an immigrant as a parent or grandparent, so everyone was pretty understanding.”

As supportive as some students were, local Republican Councilmember Inna Vernikov denounced the use of the school in a video on X directed at Adams. “This is unacceptable!” she posted. “Stop this now and take the migrants into Gracie Mansion!”

The shelter has already proven a lightning rod in the GOP-leaning district and word of migrants moving into the school drew ire of right wing commentators and some residents. Video posted to X by a reporter for The New York Post showed a woman who identified herself as “an agitated mother,” heckling the migrants, yelling they were “taking over” her kids’ school.

“How does it feel that you kicked all the kids out of school tomorrow?” she yelled. “I hope you sleep really well tonight.”

The Adams administration also faced pushback from homeless rights advocates at the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless, who issued a joint statement slamming the city’s hasty evacuation as “traumatic and disruptive.”

“This last-minute evacuation further proves that Floyd Bennett Field — a facility mired in a flood zone, miles from schools and other services — has never and will never serve as an appropriate and safe place to shelter families with children,” the group said.

An earlier wind storm in mid-December also caused chaos for migrant families, many of whom described a sleepless night with crying children, or were terrified the tents would collapse.

A 38-year-old mother of three, who asked that her name not be published to avoid repercussions from staff at the shelter said the latest commotion at the tents were stressful and exhausting for families.

“It’s not a life, it’s not good for the kids,” she said. “Everyone is feeling sad.”

Gwynne Hogan covers Brooklyn for THE CITY.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Brooklyn high school baffled by media frenzy over migrant families’ one-night stay

2024-01-12T02:59:30+00:00

This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

Students at James Madison High School Madison returned to classes Thursday without fanfare, after the school received hate calls and even a bomb threat for serving as an emergency shelter Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning for migrants with children.

The families living in tents in an airfield arrived at the school after 5 p.m. on Tuesday to wait out a heavy rain and wind storm, and left the school before 5 a.m. Wednesday morning. Even before their departure, the migrants’ presence and the principal’s decision to shift to remote classes on Wednesday immediately became a talking point for right-wing pundits nationwide.

But parents, staffers and students who spoke with THE CITY expressed shock that the school had made it into the national spotlight, for what they saw, in the scheme of things, as a relatively minor disruption.

“I understand the frustration. No one wants their kids to be displaced out of their school, but it was just one day,” said Marsha Thompson-Miles, a mother of an 11th grader at the school and the head of its Parent-Teacher Association.

“In America we have so much and we have to deal with so little. Wars are raging around the world and we don’t really feel the effects of it,” she said, adding she felt pride that the school had provided a space for families in need.

“For one night people didn’t have to deal with rain and wind and the elements. They felt safe and warm,” she added.

While pundits raged about a supposed “takeover,” students had one day of remote lessons on Wednesday, with after-school activities canceled and a dance scheduled for that evening postponed.

School officials said the NYPD had thoroughly inspected the building and custodians gave it a deep clean before students and staff returned on Thursday.

A staffer who asked not to be named said Wednesdays tend to be a shorter day for students, and that the lingering impact of the storm would have made it difficult for some students to get to school in any event.

“It has been pretty quiet here,” the staffer said. “We went remote for one day, that’s it.”

Hate calls and a bomb threat

As 70-mile-an-hour gusts of wind bore down on New York City Tuesday, officials hastily evacuated 1,900 parents and children from a tent shelter located at the remote Floyd Bennett Field, busing them to the high school to shelter in the school gym, auditorium and cafeteria in chairs and on the ground for the night.

While their stay lasted for less than 12 hours, prominent conservatives treated the migrants’ presence at the school as nothing less than an invasion, with talk radio dedicating hours to the topic while Elon Musk tweeted that migrants “will come for your homes” next. Angry commenters followed suit, flooding the school’s Facebook page after officials announced the day of remote learning.

“They are putting these people over our students,” one commenter said. Another added: “That school needs to be disinfected.”

The vitriol wasn’t just online. A woman identifying herself as an “agitated mother” heckled the migrants as they entered the school in the rain Tuesday evening. And during a Zoom call hosted by Principal Jodie Cohen and Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol, the two were shouted down by several outraged parents, several attendees said.

By Wednesday, city officials said the school had received “a torrent of hate calls and even a bomb threat,” Iscol said at a press briefing that morning. He added, “we don’t foresee us using James Madison High School again.”

Later on Wednesday, Assemblymember Michael Novakhov (R-Brooklyn) held a rally outside the school where he invoked the white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, saying that “they wanna bring more and more people who rely on the government and vote for them.”

Republican Councilmember Inna Vernikov, who represents parts of southern Brooklyn, made the rounds on national television to complain that “our kids are really being punished.”

On Thursday, Curtis Sliwa, who ran against Mayor Eric Adams in the 2021 mayoral election and has been rallying against migrant shelters over the last year, blocked traffic outside of the Kings Plaza Shopping Center while calling for the Floyd Bennett shelter to close.

“Now the parents and the children who go to Madison High School have to be penalized,” he said. “Nobody’s happy about the situation.”

James Madison High School junior Akib Chowdhury said he wasn’t disrupted by migrants staying in the school’s gym during a storm, Jan. 11, 2024.

“It was kind of sad to see,” he said, when the migrants “just want a better place, a better place to live.”

‘Kind of crazy’

The neighborhoods of Marine Park, Madison, and Midwood surrounding the high school have trended Republican, voting heavily for Trump in 2016.

But members of the school community pointed out James Madison’s diverse student body; out of 3,700 students, 500 are English language learners; 19% are Asian, 16% are Latino and 10% are Black, according to Department of Education statistics.

Others pointed out the school’s history as the alma mater of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders and a place that’s long been a haven for immigrants of all kinds, from Holocaust survivors to Russians fleeing communism.

“Madison High School has always been a melting pot,” said Steve Kastenbaum, a veteran radio reporter and alumni of the school.

“People within the alumni community were quite frankly appalled that some people in Brooklyn exhibited the vitriolic rhetoric that was aimed at these people who were seeking shelter in a storm.”

A few students leaving the high school Thursday afternoon expressed their own trepidation about what had happened there.

“They put them over us students which is kind of crazy,” said a 15-year-old.

Another student lamented the school no longer felt safe for her. “It doesn’t feel like my safe space. It usually feels like my safe space.”

But many others took the remote day in stride, and said they felt their voices had been missing from the national news about their school. Zola Zephirin, a senior, said many students were upset by how things appeared on television and online.

“The hostility towards the migrants was definitely uncalled for,” she said. “These are people, they have families, they come here and attempt to make a better life, just like many of the students at Madison.”

Gwynne Hogan covers Brooklyn for THE CITY.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Many of Chicago’s migrant students may be entitled to bus service. But are schools telling them?

2024-01-19T19:06:28+00:00

After six months in a downtown shelter, Daniela and her 11-year-old son, Luis, faced a dilemma: The city had given them until Feb. 1 to find another place to live, which would mean moving farther away from the school the fifth grader was attending.

The family, which migrated to Chicago from Venezuela, secured an apartment in South Shore with the help of Catholic Charities. Chalkbeat is using pseudonyms in this story out of privacy concerns for the interviewed families.

But their new apartment is more than 13 miles south of Luis’ school, Ogden International School of Chicago’s Jenner campus — which could mean an hour-plus commute by public transit for Luis and his mother, who had planned to look for a job.

Daniela’s predicament is one many parents could face as Chicago enforces a new rule requiring migrant families to leave shelters after 60 days. She is one of about 3,000 migrants who arrived between January and July 31 of last year and began receiving 60-day eviction notices in early December 2023, according to a press release from City Hall. If families haven’t secured permanent housing, they must get back in line for a spot at a city shelter.

But many migrant families in shelters might not know the rights their children have to district-provided transportation — or even that they can remain in the same school despite moving — if schools are not informing them, or there’s no one to help translate conversations between school staff and families.

Every school has a liaison for homeless students who is supposed to inform homeless families of their rights, a district spokesperson said. Those liaisons, along with principals and staff with the district’s Office of Cultural and Language Education, tell newcomer families how to apply for transportation services, the district said. Each school also posts a list of homeless students’ rights in English and Spanish near the main office, the district said.

Until Daniela spoke with a Chalkbeat reporter, she didn’t know that the federal McKinney Vento Homeless Assistance Act allows homeless students to stay in the same school even if they move, such as to another shelter, and requires school districts to provide transportation. It also allows students such as Luis, who have found permanent housing, to stay at the same school until the end of the school year. No one at the school had told her, she said.

In fact, federal law says that districts “shall presume” that keeping homeless students in their original school is in their best interest unless that’s against their parents’ or guardians’ wishes.

After publication of this story, CPS provided Chalkbeat additional details about how schools are informing families of their rights under the law. They said every newly arrived family gets an enrollment packet, both in English and Spanish, that includes information about the rights of homeless students, according to the district.

Staff at the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education also help these families fill out an application for homeless students, which “provides families with the first opportunity to review the process and ask questions,” the district said. Schools have a 24/7 translation line that staff can use to communicate with families who don’t speak English. CPS said it fulfills its legal obligation to provide transportation to homeless students by providing them with CTA cards.

The goal of the federal law is to provide stability for homeless students. One 2015 study found that New York City students who transferred schools were more likely to be chronically absent, and of those students, those who were also homeless were more likely to repeat the same grade.

Daniela also didn’t know Chicago Public Schools allows parents of younger homeless students like Luis to apply for yellow bus service if they can’t accompany their child on the commute. Or that CPS policy requires schools to inform families who are homeless of their transportation rights and options.

“We’re not, as a district, transporting any newcomers,” said Kimberly Jones, CPS’s director of transportation, in late November during an interview with WGN. On Tuesday, a district spokesperson said the transportation department does not see students’ immigration status, but still called Jones’ statement accurate, in that she’s unable to identify any students on bus routes based on their immigration status.

But district officials have indicated they are tracking immigration status internally. At a City Council Education Committee meeting in late November, a district official testified that CPS had enrolled at least 4,000 migrant students.

This year the district is exclusively busing students with disabilities and homeless students due to a driver shortage and as it’s under state watch to shorten commutes for students with disabilities. District officials have said migrant students are largely homeless, meaning they’re living in shelter, doubled up with others, or in public places.

Of the roughly 8,700 students the district is currently busing, just 128 are homeless, the district said. Another nearly 4,000 students who would typically qualify for transportation this year are receiving stipends, with just 18 of them homeless.

The school did give Daniela and her son free CTA cards for the school commute to and from their shelter, a service it is providing as part of its legal obligation to provide homeless students with transportation. But, “they did not provide the option for yellow bus service,” she said.

Ogden-Jenner did not respond to Chalkbeat’s request for comment. The district also declined to comment specifically on Daniela’s experience.

Schools must inform families of their rights, advocates say

CPS policy also allows families of young children who are homeless to apply for “hardship” transportation, which provides yellow bus service for children who are in kindergarten through sixth grade. Caregivers must fill out paperwork to prove they have a conflict that does not allow them to assist their child in getting to school. Examples of “hardship” include work, job training, schooling of their own, a conflict with shelter rules, court orders, or another “good cause,” according to CPS’ website.

The 60-day shelter rule is “going to require families to move more often, and it makes it more challenging to get to the school of origin and stay stable in their school of origin,” said Patricia Nix-Hodes, director of the Law Project of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. “If they are eligible for hardship transportation, they should be getting it.”

“The onus isn’t on the family who is newly arrived to Chicago to figure out what services might be available for transportation,” Nix-Hodes said.

School liaisons for homeless students often have other duties in schools, which may make it difficult for them to keep homeless families adequately informed, Nix-Hodes said.

In addition to informing families of their rights, the liaisons should also help families figure out if they’re eligible for bus service and with filling out any required paperwork, Nix-Hodes said.

Other families are in the dark about transportation rights

Edgar, a friend of Daniela’s who is also getting ready to move from shelter, also did not know he could apply for bus service so that his 8-year-old daughter could travel without him from their new home to her current school, Ogden Elementary.

Edgar is moving from the same shelter as Daniela to the same South Shore apartment building with his family. When he informed Ogden about their upcoming move, staff offered to find a school close to his new home — but they didn’t mention that he could apply for bus service to help get her to Ogden, he said.

Daniela's son, Luis, left, poses with Edgar's daughter, right, on Wed., Jan. 3, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.

After learning the information from a Chalkbeat reporter, he went back to Ogden to ask about bus service. The school confirmed that service was available but “these are things that take time to approve,” Edgar explained in Spanish.

Instead, with Ogden’s help, he plans to enroll his daughter at a school that’s a 12-minute walk from their new home. While his daughter is OK with leaving Ogden, she’s sad about leaving her English class, he said. Ogden did not return a request for comment, and CPS didn’t respond to questions about Edgar’s experience.

Schools shouldn’t encourage homeless families to “move schools when their living situation changes,” Nix-Hodes said.

The law allows homeless students to stay in their same school because school stability is good for children’s academic performance and social-emotional health, especially when they’re coming to the United States from another country, Nix-Hodes said.

Gwen McElhattan, a social worker with nonprofit Chicago Help Initiative, which provides meals, clothing, and other services to homeless families, has received questions from many migrant parents on how to enroll their child in school. The city has created a “welcome center” for migrants at Roberto Clemente High School, which is supposed to help families with school enrollment and other resources. But McElhattan said that many people don’t know it exists — and doesn’t sense that many designated people are informing families of how to navigate school enrollment.

“They don’t know about it because they’re migrants — they don’t always know everything that’s happening,” said McElhattan, adding that their primary concerns are food and shelter. “They’re just trying to survive. They have children – they’re just trying to keep going.”

Luis, Daniela’s son, said he likes his teachers at Ogden-Jenner and he’s made some friends. But he’s had a tough time understanding lessons because there’s often no one who can help translate, he said. Because of the language barrier, there are days that he doesn’t want to go to school, his mother said.

Still, Daniela would prefer to keep her son enrolled at Ogden-Jenner if she can get busing because she senses it’s a good school. By state standards, it is: The school earned the Illinois State Board of Education’s second-highest rating for academic performance.

Daniela has not yet talked with the school about what happens next or what her options are.

It’s difficult to communicate with staff, she said. “En la escuela allí no hablan español” — At the school, they don’t speak Spanish.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago educators ask lawmakers to step up support for schools seeing increase in migrant students

2024-01-18T01:45:14+00:00

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Viviana Ortiz is overwhelmed. As the only advocate for students experiencing homelessness at Cameron Elementary School in West Humboldt Park, she supports 126 students — a workload that has dramatically increased with the influx of migrant students from Latin America and other countries.

“The amount of support that our families need is incredible,” said Ortiz, who noted that she has never seen families in such need of clothing, food, and other necessities.

On Wednesday, Ortiz joined other educators, local and national union leaders, including Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and parents of new arrivals at a roundtable at Cameron Elementary School to call for more support for migrant students from federal, state, and local governments and to draw attention to the struggles of migrant families at Cameron and across the city.

Gabriel Paez, an English learner program teacher at Cameron and chair of the Chicago Teachers Union bilingual education committee, estimate that about 200 migrant students at the school need access to more bilingual education, transportation, and basic needs — a reflection of the wider challenges presented by the arrival of thousands of migrant families to the city.

As of Jan. 17, more than 30,000 migrants had arrived in Chicago since August 2022, according to a city dashboard. Most crossed the southern border and were ordered bused here by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Families and children are often fleeing countries that have seen a rise of violence and political strife.

At a City Council Education Committee meeting in November, a CPS official said the district had enrolled at least 4,000 migrant students.

Teachers at Cameron Elementary school said they have noticed some migrant students arrive at the school without proper clothing, such as coats warm enough for Chicago winter, and in need of medical support. Many are without permanent housing.

A spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools said the district has provided additional funding for staffing and services to help schools with the increase of newly arriving students. Nearly all migrant students have been classified as English learners or Students in Temporary Living Situations. CPS officials said they are currently working with the city, state, lawmakers, and the U.S. Department of Education to receive more funding.

At the roundtable, organized by the Chicago Teachers Union, participants echoed the call for more resources to help migrant students, including more bilingual teachers and staff.

In Chicago, the number of designated bilingual teachers has declined in recent years, but teachers with bilingual or English as a second language endorsements have increased, according to an analysis of staffing data by Chalkbeat Chicago. Another finding from the analysis found that the ratio of staff with bilingual credentials or titles to students was increasing as more English learners have enrolled.

At Wednesday’s roundtable, Paez said the district should push to cover 100% of tuition costs for educators who want to get a bilingual endorsement. He applauded the district for currently covering 50% of tuition, but said he wants to see teachers who want to get that endorsement not go into debt.

Paez also said the school needs more bilingual staff who can help students and families dealing with emergencies. Paez said he and other staff members at the school have gone above and beyond their duties to support students.

“Taking children to the ER is not in my job description, but we do it because the need is there,” said Paez. “If CPS, or the state, or the federal government could pay for someone to be in our building day in and day out whose only purpose is to help get these people on their feet, that will make the teaching and learning part of this equation a lot more manageable.”

State Rep. Lilian Jiménez, who represents neighborhoods on Chicago’s northwest side, noted that families who have migrated from Latin America need transportation and access to bus passes to get to school.

Chicago Public Schools has grappled with a bus driver shortage over the past few years. This school year, the district decided to only bus students who are legally obligated to have transportation — such as students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness. This leaves out 5,500 students who used to get buses to and from the city’s magnet and selective enrollment schools.

Migrant students might not know that they are eligible for transportation if they don’t have access to stable housing under federal law. The law also says students can stay enrolled at the same school even if they have to move to another shelter.

In November, Gov. J.B. Pritzker allocated $160 million to the Illinois Department of Human Services to address the ongoing migrant crisis, with $65 million going to the city to help set up a winter shelter. With state lawmakers kicking off the spring legislative session this week, advocates are hoping for more money to support families who have migrated to the United States.

Jimenez said she’ll work throughout the spring session to get more tuition reimbursement to help teachers get a bilingual education endorsement.

CTU President Stacy Davis Gates called on the federal government to support Chicago during the migrant crisis as the city and district lack the infrastructure to assist migrant families.

“We need our collaboration to extend beyond the city. The city is not set up to deal with an immigration crisis. We do not have the infrastructure,” said Davis Gates. “So, this idea that we are just going to focus in on what isn’t here, let’s focus on who is supposed to bring the things that we need here.”

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

We are facing a migrant mental health crisis. More school social workers could help.

2024-02-05T13:00:00+00:00

A new student recently arrived in my third grade classroom in tears. She missed her mom, who was back in Colombia, she told me. She cried from 8 a.m. until lunch. The other students stared. Some cried, too. Some offered hugs. We all felt the heaviness of the moment.

I tried every trauma-informed technique I knew to comfort her: We took deep breaths, she visited our peace corner, I lent her a teddy bear, we looked at some calming books, and she wrote a letter to her mom. Despite my efforts, this child was inconsolable, and I could not just continue teaching. Our school’s lone social worker was dealing with cases that had already escalated into crises. I felt woefully unprepared.

Ashley Busone Rodríguez

I teach at a community school in Washington Heights where, like most New York City schools, we’ve recently received a dramatic increase in immigrant students. Unfortunately, it feels like we are failing them from the minute they walk through our school doors.

As teachers, we have a lot of training in literacy and math instruction. What we’re missing is what to do when trauma interrupts our teaching. Through my work with the City University of New York Initiative on Immigration and Education, I recently published this guide on trauma-informed practice for educators. I’ve been fortunate to gather resources and training on techniques that can support my newcomer students.

But even my practice isn’t enough to get teachers and students through this crisis. We need more social workers in our schools. Because if we don’t address their trauma now, these children won’t be able to get through the day, let alone learn.

Our one social worker for 450 elementary students does not have time in her overflowing caseload to do an intake with every new child. And our school is better than some in New York’s Department of Education. In 2023, there were about 907,000 students enrolled in NYC Public Schools, not including charters. There were around 2,000 social workers, according to the department’s press office. Like at our school, that’s roughly one social worker for every 450 students.

Instead of receiving trauma-informed resources and training from the city, I receive paperwork to fill out. Almost immediately, I must evaluate migrant students’ reading levels: Do they need English as a New Language services? I have to quiz them in math and determine if they will need intervention. I have to find out if they’ve been out of school and, if so, for how long. I am allowed to provide these students basic necessities, such as school uniforms or snacks from the teacher’s lounge if they have not eaten that morning, but a social worker could do so much more.

With more social workers, our school could offer consistent counseling to new students and their families, with periodic check-ins to monitor their mental and physical health and their academic progress. They could do more home visits and provide more preventative, rather than crisis, mental health care. They could take the time to really get to know families and build trust with them.

Due to time constraints, my own conversations with new families must be brief. I usually duck into the hallway to meet a parent or a relative who tells me stories of persecution, famine, poverty, or natural disasters that drove them to seek refuge in the United States. If I had time to linger, I might be able to understand the root causes of their child’s trauma. I could relay this information to a social worker who could apply their training when time permits.

Instead, I try to convince the family that their child will do just fine in my classroom, and then I have to return to teaching the rest of the class. When a child continues to cry, their tears remind me that they need more than milk and a math assessment.

On the same day I was trying to console our newest student, I got an email from the school district about Saturday School. I couldn’t help but think how the education system’s priorities were so backward.

Many schools in New York City run programs like Saturday School that help promote academic and test-taking skills. Where I work, we typically choose students who need a little extra help in math or reading and set aside money for curriculum and staff to run a remedial program. Our new arrivals are often considered for this academic support.

But how can we possibly be expecting these students to attend Saturday School for tutoring when they can barely get through school on a weekday?

Another “urgent email” recently came across my screen while I was reading a gut-wrenching article about the 11-year-old migrant who apparently died by suicide in a New York City shelter a few weeks ago. As I scrolled through, holding back tears, I saw the education department’s mandatory “Remote Learning Protocol” reminder pop up on my screen. That meant I had to reshuffle my schedule that day to ensure that students took computers home, that I assigned work in Google Classroom, and that parents had their passwords “just in case.”

Saturday School. Technology for every child. All of these are great initiatives and have their purpose. But what if, instead of test prep and technology, we use these resources to hire social workers and trauma counselors? What if there was time in every school’s schedule for social-emotional check-ins and self-care small groups? In the wake of a nationwide migrant mental health crisis, we must prioritize our students’ mental health before their ability to answer multiple-choice questions or log in to a Chromebook.

Ashley Busone Rodríguez is a third grade bilingual teacher at an elementary school in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood. She’s also a project researcher and instructor at the CUNY-Initiative on Immigration and Education. She has 50 students on her roster between two classes, and 11 of them were new to the country last school year.

Bilingual program to launch at Malcolm X Shabazz to serve Newark’s growing population of English learners

2024-02-05T11:00:00+00:00

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A new bilingual education program will launch in the South Ward this fall to help Newark’s growing population of English language learners access services closer to where they live.

High school students learning English as a second language will be eligible to enroll in the new program next school year at Malcolm X Shabazz High School, where concerns over declining enrollment, student performance, and safety challenges have remained in recent years. The program will start with ninth and 10th graders and then add one grade per year.

The new program comes as the district’s enrollment grows amid the latest influx of immigrants to New Jersey. It also comes almost three years after the district agreed to overhaul services for English language learners as part of a settlement following a years long investigation by federal officials.

More than 10,000 students – a quarter of the city’s public school enrollment – are English language learners, district officials said.

The new program at Shabazz will offer South Ward high school students learning English the option to receive services near home, according to Superintendent Roger León, who announced the new program at a recent school board meeting.

“There are students that live in the South Ward that take two or three buses to get to Eastside or Barringer High School because they’re in a bilingual Spanish program,” León said.

Currently, South Ward high schools offer no programs for English language learners, León said.

The program previously existed at Shabazz but was removed under state control of the district, according to district spokeswoman Nancy Deering. Since León was appointed to the board in 2018, when local control was reinstated, the district has added an engineering academy, cosmetology program, and an aviation program to the school as part of the district’s high school redesign strategy.

Last school year, 272 students attended Shabazz and less than 2% were English language learners, according to 2022-23 state data.

The district’s English learners include a mix of students born in the country and abroad. Most speak Spanish or Portuguese, although some speak Arabic, French, Haitian Creole, or other languages.

With the influx of second-language learners in the district, officials are also wrestling with a shortage of bilingual teachers who can communicate in different languages.

During a January school board meeting, board member Vereliz Santana said the new program at Shabazz would alleviate some of the staffing pressures at Eastside and Barringer high schools. Barringer has “the highest number of bilingual and ESL vacancies,” she said.

“It’s a student population that we’re committed to serving and to educate and we’re rising to the challenge,” Santana said.

In 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a nearly four-year investigation that found “wide-ranging failures” in the district’s English language program, officials said. The department’s civil rights division launched the investigation when the state still operated the Newark school system and in response to a complaint that the district was failing to properly serve English learners.

As part of a settlement agreement with federal officials, Newark agreed to overhaul how it serves English learners, but León has shared few details about plans to expand bilingual education districtwide.

In 2022, the Newark school board approved a 15-page resolution that restated the district’s responsibilities to meet the needs of students learning English as mandated by state and federal laws, such as screening students to identify English learners and providing teachers of English learners with relevant professional development opportunities.

Teachers and students are also grappling with the challenges of having English language learners in classrooms where there’s little support.

Sani Scott, a junior at Central High School, during the board meeting in January, said it’s tough to communicate with her bilingual classmates in her history class, and teachers are often stuck translating lessons and notes for students – “a process that takes up to at least 10 minutes of class time.”

Bilingual students “don’t get the proper education they deserve because they’re so busy trying to translate everything just to keep up with us,” Scott said. “That keeps them isolated and makes their social groups very small because of the language barrier.”

Yvette Jordan, chair of the Newark Education Workers Caucus, said at January’s board meeting that teachers aren’t getting enough support to help bilingual students. Teachers have to use their prep time to translate materials, which puts a strain on their time to plan lessons, Jordan said.

She read a statement from one of her Latina students who feels insecure because her classmates don’t understand her: “I don’t know if they are making fun of us, because they don’t understand me or my friends, and I feel bad.”

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools enrollment climbs as more migrant families arrive

2024-02-08T23:43:51+00:00

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More than 5,700 newly arrived immigrant students have enrolled in Chicago Public Schools since the beginning of the school year, district officials said Thursday.

Preliminary school enrollment data updated daily on the city data portal and analyzed by Chalkbeat shows overall enrollment increased by 4,500 students since the official count on the 20th day of school in September. After more than a decade of decline, CPS saw its enrollment stabilize this school year.

“The number is fluid and evolving,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said Thursday. “Our principals and teachers and school communities have been incredibly welcoming to the students and their families.”

His comments came during a virtual press conference about a new volunteer coordination effort launched by the City of Chicago aimed at supporting migrant families. It also comes after city officials once again delayed its plan to enforce a 60-day shelter stay limit on migrant families.

Publicly available data does not reveal how many CPS students are migrants or how many are living in city shelters. District officials said they do not collect information about the immigration status of students or their families “to support the City of Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance.”

Preliminary enrollment data analyzed by Chalkbeat indicates nearly 7,000 more students have been identified as English language learners since the end of September, when the district officially counted enrollment. English language learners can include both newly arrived immigrants, as well as students already living in Chicago.

Last school year, English language learners made up about one-fifth of all students; a decade ago, these students made up roughly 16% of CPS.

Last month, educators, union officials, and some local lawmakers raised concerns about schools without enough bilingual staff and other resources struggling to meet those students’ language and mental health needs.

District officials said Thursday that just under 6% of schools are lacking teachers with necessary ESL or bilingual credentials. Karime Asaf, the district’s chief of language and cultural education, said officials are prioritizing those roughly 30 schools — which officials did not identify — “for any kind of services or resources.”

Asaf said schools are working to get more teachers certified to teach English learners. District officials said they’ve allocated a total of $8 million to schools that saw increases in English learners since the 20th day of school.

Martinez said around 600 teachers are currently working toward getting bilingual or English as a Second Language endorsements.

Martinez said currently 7,200 teachers have these qualifications, up from about 5,100 teachers in 2018. However, bilingual staffing can vary by school, and often support staff, such as social workers, are not bilingual. CPS does provide a 24/7 language interpretation hotline that schools can call to get assistance communicating with families, but some parents have said they’ve struggled to communicate with schools or understand their school options when it’s time to move.

Students who are homeless — those in shelters, living doubled up somewhere, or living in a public place — have a right to remain at their school even if they move out of the school’s boundary and are entitled to transportation provided by the district, such as free CTA passes. By state law, if a school enrolls 20 or more students who speak a language other than English, the school must set up a bilingual education program with qualified staff. Asaf said this is “a multi-year process.”

“Generally, the challenge we have is when families just walk up to our buildings and we always tell our schools: Enroll the families. And then we have a process to work with those families to make sure we find the nearest program,” Martinez said.

The district also has bi-weekly meetings with staff at the city’s largest temporary shelters that are housing migrants, to “make sure that our families understand that there’s always a way to connect with the Chicago Public Schools … to make sure all their questions are answered,” Asaf said. She added that most school leaders attend these meetings.

Martinez said CPS is planning to hire newcomer adults who have received work authorization for “critical needs” at schools, including as custodians, as well as positions in transportation, nutrition, and classroom support.

Many of Chicago’s migrant families have been searching for work but need authorization to obtain jobs legally. Axios reported that about 1,000 newcomers have received work permits as of late January, four months after the federal government expanded eligibility to nearly half a million immigrants from Venezuela, where political and economic turmoil has pushed many residents to leave.

“We were proactive working with the city to say, since we know we have these families who are looking for jobs, we have many openings,” Martinez told reporters on Thursday. “We are now just trying to make it easier for our families to be able to apply for these different jobs.”

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org. Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Four square, fútbol, and phonics: A day at Denver’s Valdez Elementary with two newly arrived migrant students

2024-02-14T00:43:59+00:00

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Fourth graders streamed one at a time through the playground door at Denver’s Valdez Elementary, a snaking jumble of energy and untied shoelaces.

Most bounded up the stairs to their classrooms. Only a few stopped to give a quick side hug to the staff member who was squinting in the sun and holding the door. Two of the huggers were Jesus and Leiker, who arrived in Denver from Venezuela a few months ago.

The boys, ages 9 and 10, are among the more than 38,000 migrants who have come to Denver in the past year after fleeing political and economic crises in their home countries.

Some of the new arrivals are families with children like Jesus and Leiker. Denver Public Schools has enrolled more than 3,200 of these young people since the start of the school year.

A majority arrived after the October cutoff date that determines how much per-student funding DPS gets from the state, creating a financial shortfall for the state’s largest district and causing schools to scramble for resources.

But not all schools. The new students are concentrated in a couple dozen of DPS’ more than 200 schools, which the district has been calling hotspots. The main reason is because the schools offer specialized instruction in both English and Spanish.

Valdez, also known as Escuela Valdez, has a longstanding dual language program. It’s also right up the street from a city-run shelter inside a Quality Inn, which Principal Jessica Buckley said everyone simply calls “The Quality.” Valdez, which had about 400 students last year, has welcomed more than 100 new students in the past few months.

Valdez Elementary — or Escuela Valdez — is a dual language school in northwest Denver.

Every classroom in the northwest Denver elementary school is at capacity with 35 children — except the fourth grade, which before last week had 29 per class.

In the face of this new reality, Valdez has had to make adjustments. Some of the shifts have been beautiful. Others have been hard. “The bright spots are the growth of our kids and our community,” Buckley said. “The challenge is resources.”

Jesus and Leiker met at The Quality, where both of their families were staying, and became fast friends. They say they are like brothers: “Somos como hermanos.”

This is what one school day looked like recently for Jesus and Leiker, whose last names Chalkbeat is withholding to protect their identities as they navigate life in a new country.

Valdez is ‘an excellent place to land’

The boys were the first two to enter the classroom, walking shoulder-to-shoulder and chattering.

“OK! Sit in a place where you think you can focus well,” teacher Isabelle King said in Spanish.

Jesus and Leiker scurried to opposite corners of a classroom rug imprinted with a map of the United States. Jesus sat cross-legged above the state of Michigan, and Leiker scrambled to a spot near California. They said “buenos días” to the classmates next to them. Following the teacher’s prompt, they also named their favorite sport.

“Fútbol,” Jesus said with a smile.

The fourth grade class had been watching video clips about children with disabilities. That day’s clip featured a girl who was Deaf and used a sign language interpreter at school.

When the teacher paused the video to ask for one way the students were the same as the girl and one way they were different, Leiker raised his hand. In Spanish, he said that he was different because he could talk to his friends directly, without an interpreter.

Jesus, in the blue polo shirt, listens as teacher Isabelle King gives instructions during morning meeting in her fourth grade classroom.

That’s possible at Valdez because all of the students speak Spanish. As a dual language school, Valdez doesn’t admit native English speakers after kindergarten. In the younger grades, as much as 90% of the classroom instruction is in Spanish to immerse students in the language.

Whereas other schools in Denver and around the country have had to use technology, sometimes as rudimentary as Google Translate, to communicate with new students and families from Venezuela, no interpreters are needed at Valdez.

“We are an excellent place for these kids to land,” Buckley said. Because everyone speaks Spanish, she said, the new students are “able to interact and learn and be themselves.”

Students learn the language of play

In the gym, P.E. teacher Jessica Dominguez told the students to split into teams.

“Me and Leiker!” Jesus shouted in Spanish.

For the next 40 minutes, their team rotated between basketball, four square, and a rock climbing wall. The boys dominated at basketball, sprinting around the half court and shouting “rápido, rápido!” — fast, fast! — as their teammates were shooting.

The girls dominated at four square. Jesus struggled. After he lost for serving the ball when he wasn’t supposed to, a girl paused the game to explain the rules to him in Spanish.

“He didn’t know,” she told her classmates.

Leiker, in the top left square, and Jesus, standing behind him in line, play four square with their classmates during P.E.

Staff at Valdez agree that the new students have enriched the school linguistically. Whereas in the past students — and even adults — would often default to English when speaking with each other, now it’s most practical to speak in Spanish. That way, everyone understands.

The phenomenon was on display at recess, too. Soccer has long been the most popular activity at recess, Buckley said. But now, Spanish is what is spoken on the field.

“Leiker! Leiker! Atrás! Atrás!”” a teammate called out, urging him to pass the ball behind.

The second most popular game is a new one called gaga ball. In contrast to the Spanish spoken on the soccer field, all of the students playing gaga ball spoke in English.

At the shrill tweet-tweet of a whistle, Jesus, Leiker, and the other soccer players ran to the cafeteria for lunch. Leiker’s cheeks were flushed pink as he waited for his macaroni and cheese. Jesus brought his lunch from home, but he still stood in line with his friend.

Together, they found seats at a round table with two other fourth-grade boys.

“You guys played soccer today?” Assistant Principal Cesar Sanchez asked in Spanish.

“Sí!” they answered in unison.

“We lost,” Leiker added.

“Does it matter if you win or lose?” Sanchez asked. “What matters?”

“Have fun!” they said in unison.

Soccer is the most popular game at recess at Valdez Elementary. On this warm winter day, Jesus, kicking the ball, Leiker, and the other students used rock-paper-scissors to pick teams.

Teachers make academic adjustments

It’s always been the case at Valdez, like at all schools, that some students are ahead academically and some are behind, and teachers must adapt their lessons. But with the newly arrived students, teachers have had to differentiate to new extremes. Valdez has welcomed some fourth graders who don’t know how to write their names, Buckley said.

Jesus and Leiker can read and write in Spanish. They said they went to school in Venezuela before coming to the United States. Still, their teachers — especially literacy teacher Giovanni Leon, who the students call Don Gio — have had to make adjustments, working to strengthen the new arrivals’ reading and writing skills in their native language while also starting from scratch in English, teaching them the alphabet and the sounds the letters make.

On this day after P.E., Jesus and Leiker’s class started their literacy block on the carpet, where Leon explained the day’s assignment: to read an 1873 speech by women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony and answer questions about the text.

Leiker, far left, and Jesus, third from the left, work on writing complete sentences.

But the text and the questions were in English, part of Valdez’s 50/50 split between English and Spanish in the upper grades. For years, the language rotation was very black-and-white. With the new students, it’s become more gray.

As most students paired up to begin reading the Susan B. Anthony speech, Leon called Jesus, Leiker, and three others to a C-shaped table in the back of the room. They would be reading and answering questions about another text, a fairy tale, in Spanish.

First, however, Leon had them practice writing complete sentences with a subject and a predicate, a capital letter at the beginning, and a period at the end. He gave them a subject in Spanish — el perro, the dog — and asked them to finish the sentence.

Many newly arrived students at Valdez are practicing literacy skills in their native Spanish while also learning English.

“The dog is playing in the yard,” Leiker wrote in Spanish in his notebook.

“The dog is barking,” Jesus wrote.

A while later, when Leon pointed out that Leiker was missing a period, the boy swirled the tip of his pencil several times, making a period so big his teacher couldn’t miss it.

Jesus has a lightbulb moment

While many things are different at Valdez these days, some things are the same. One of those is that students, including the new arrivals, continue to have what teachers call lightbulb moments — the moment of joy and discovery when an academic concept clicks.

On this day, something clicked for Jesus in math.

Math is not Jesus’ favorite subject. Both boys said they like recess and lunch best, followed by snack. Leiker said he thinks music class, where they learn to play instruments, is the hardest. Shaking his head, Jesus said that for him, it’s math.

Leiker, left, and Jesus, right, giggle as they work side by side on math problems on their computers.

During part of the math block, the boys were sitting with King at her C-shaped table. To help explain 5 x 30 to Leiker, King took out a bucket of yellow cubes stuck together in groups of 10. Leiker portioned the cube stacks into five piles of three and counted them up.

Jesus sat next to him, working on addition. But the yellow cubes caught his eye.

When Leiker got the right answer — 150 — Jesus let out an, “Ohhhhhhhh!”

Jesus put his own work aside and helped Leiker with his next problem: 30 x 40. Using a bigger set of yellow cubes, the boys counted in Spanish. They spoke in unison, just like they had when they were talking about soccer at lunch. “100, 200, 300, 400…

“1,200!”

“That’s it,” King said.

The boys beamed.

Valdez will need more desks

Just past 3 p.m., Jesus, Leiker, and their fourth-grade classmates streamed out of Valdez through the same playground door they’d entered seven hours earlier, in the same jumbly line.

Buckley stood on the blacktop, surveying the scene.

Valdez has more students now than at any time in recent history. The school is so full that when newly arrived families show up in the office looking to register their children, as three had that day, the secretary often has to redirect them to nearby elementary schools.

Jesus, left, and Leiker, right, walk to their classroom at Valdez Elementary, which has welcomed more than 100 newly arrived students this year, many of them from Venezuela.

Valdez has hired more paraprofessionals and an intervention teacher to help the new students catch up. It has also bought more books and scrounged for hand-me-down furniture. The assistant principal, Sanchez, has at times driven around the city in his own truck, collecting spare desks from elementary schools that don’t have as many students.

A few hours before class was dismissed for the day, Buckley learned the school would need two more desks. The district was in touch to share that two newly arrived students — in fourth grade, the only grade at Valdez with any more room — would be enrolling the following week.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado budget committee plans aid for schools enrolling more migrant students

2024-02-14T22:25:39+00:00

This story has been updated to include a comment from the governor.

Colorado lawmakers on the powerful Joint Budget Committee want to provide some financial assistance to schools grappling with educating an influx of migrant students this year.

The idea from state Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat who sits on the committee, would allocate up to $24 million, to be split among school districts that have enrolled newly arrived students after the October cutoff date that determines districts’ per-pupil funding. But the funding would be far less than what the state provides to educate a student.

The budget committee, which plays a major role in how the state spends its money, voted unanimously earlier this month to draft a bill allocating the funds.

Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, an Arvada Democrat and vice chair of the committee, said she plans to co-sponsor the bill once it’s ready. The bill has not yet been introduced.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Gov. Jared Polis said he’s working with the legislature on a proposal to provide additional funding for school districts that have new arrivals after the October count date.

Public school enrollment in Colorado: Here’s what you need to know

The state annually adjusts districts’ education funding up or down during the legislative session based on each district’s student enrollment on Oct. 1. But the surge in migrant students since the official count has overwhelmed many districts and prompted calls from school leaders for more aid to teach recent arrivals.

Sirota said while the state doesn’t have an exact tally, she’s heard estimates of up to 8,000 new student arrivals statewide since October. Some schools have needed to increase class sizes and have a greater need for services that help English learners, she said.

“This crisis is being felt across our cities, counties, and the state,” she said.

The state money would be a one-time infusion for districts. Joint Budget Committee members have said they want to ensure school districts wouldn’t need to apply for the money, but instead would have to provide the state with a tally of eligible students.

How much money districts would get likely will depend on whether the committee decides to allocate the full $24 million Sirota has proposed and how many newly arrived students have enrolled statewide since the October count.

The $24 million sum is not a calculation of how much it costs to fully educate the migrant students in Colorado. Rather, it is money the state would otherwise put in its savings account for education. Increasing local tax revenue means the state needs to spend $24 million less on schools this year than anticipated.

The proposed bill would reallocate those funds, but committee members have said they want to also find other funding sources.

The extra money would help districts, but it would be less than the $10,614 per student, on average, they get for students who are enrolled during the October count.

Sirota said funding is tight this year, especially when there are many competing budget priorities. But the extra funding would help districts bearing the brunt of the costs.

“I want to help our districts better absorb the costs that they are incurring with so many new students who are new to the country that they have taken on since October,” she said.

States across the country have seen a spike in recent migrant arrivals. The Denver area has dealt with the brunt of those arrivals.

In Denver Public Schools, migrant student enrollment has ballooned by more than 3,200 of these young people since the start of the school year. Many arrived after the October count that determined state per-student funding sent by the state.

The impact has also been uneven within the district. New students are concentrated in about two dozen of Denver’s schools.

But schools and cities across the metro area and state are reporting more students arriving every day, either from families moving to find work or recently coming to the state. The influx has caused financial shortfalls and pushback from some communities.

Correction: This story has been corrected to update the per pupil figure districts get from the state.

Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at jgonzales@chalkbeat.org.

An existing program for migrant students can’t help schools with the current influx of new students. Here’s why.

2024-02-22T18:59:22+00:00

Some of Colorado’s most diverse school districts, including Aurora and Greeley, are used to waves of immigration bringing in new students in the middle of the year.

Recently, families from Burma have moved into Greeley, and Aurora officials recall hundreds of new students from Afghanistan after U.S. troops pulled out.

But this year, the midyear wave is even bigger, with most students arriving from Venezuela and other South American countries. And it is overwhelming some district systems.

“We’re running at 300% our normal typical average for the school year,” said Brett Johnson, chief financial officer for Aurora Public Schools, referring to the number of midyear enrollments, which are up from the typical 500 to 800 in a year.

Schools need everything from new desks and more classroom space, to more teachers, bilingual staff, and specialized teachers who can administer screening tests to determine students’ levels of English proficiency and help them learn English.

But many of the new students from South America arrived after the Oct. 1 cutoff that determines how much per-student state funding each district will get. And although government officials refer to this new group of immigrants as “migrants,” the students do not qualify for money from the federal Migrant Education Program.

What does the Migrant Education Program do?

The Migrant Education Program began in 1966 and was designed to support the children of farmworker families. To qualify for the program, students must have parents who work in agriculture, or work in the field themselves, usually in temporary or seasonal positions, and must have moved between school districts within the last three years.

Some of the children might belong to families who travel around the country following the seasonal availability of farm work. They aren’t necessarily new to the country, and many already are fluent in English. Immigration status doesn’t matter, just as it doesn’t for the students who arrived this semester. By law, all children can access free public education.

In Colorado, there were about 4,500 agricultural migrant children aged 1 through 21 this year — fewer than the thousands of new students from South America. The $7.5 million federal allocation for the state helps younger children succeed in school and focuses on keeping teens and young adults up to age 22 in school instead of dropping out to work full time.

Advocates from the program travel to farms or worksites to enroll children in the program and convince older students up to age 22 to stay in school. The program works with families, visiting their homes, supporting their mental health, and figuring out what other barriers might exist for the students to learn. The funding also pays for school supplies, tutoring, and summer programming.

“A lot of our families have needs that are pretty basic, if we just try to push education on them they’re not ready a lot of times,” said Tomás Mejia, Colorado’s director for the Migrant Education Program. “If we help them be well enough, help the parents and adults be well enough to help the kids, that can really help a lot more.”

The new South American students also need the same types of support. For both groups of students, educators say there’s a need to build trust and provide help that goes beyond the classroom.

The Greeley school district usually enrolls the largest number of agricultural migrant students in the state, and Greeley also is seeing a wave of non-agricultural migrant students. One school recently enrolled 19 new students in one day. An elementary school is now so full that teachers are starting to operate out of mobile carts, moving from room to room, instead of having a classroom.

School districts are addressing student needs

The Greeley district’s existing welcome center, which has always helped the community’s immigrant population, is playing a big role in helping the district welcome and make families feel like they belong, said Brian Lemos, director of instruction and English language development.

But the district is also relying on community partners to help families learn to use technology, learn English, and to offer help with housing or employment.

“There’s definitely unique needs,” Lemos said. “They’re new to the country. All of them have needs as far as language acquisition.”

“A lot of these students are coming to us with severe trauma,” said Theresa Myers, a spokesperson for the Greeley district. “Some of the families from Venezuela, they’ve been trying to travel for months. Our impact on our mental health services is real.”

Right now, the district has a mental health counselor at every school. But 35 counselor and social worker positions in the district were funded by ESSER dollars that won’t be available after September. Now the district is trying to figure out how to keep the much-needed positions.

Although Colorado gives school districts extra money to assist students who are learning English, most school districts say they have to use money from their general fund to cover the services they provide because that specific money isn’t enough.

And since so many of these students arrived after October 1, the districts didn’t get the money for them this year. (If students are still enrolled next fall, the districts will get money then.) In the meantime, school districts are having to hire new staff including paraprofessionals to help teachers with larger-than-normal class sizes. In Aurora, “We have several instances in which elementary schools came back from Christmas break with almost 100 more kids than before,” Johnson said.

Legislators in Colorado are drafting a $24 million proposal to give districts some funding for these midyear enrollees. It won’t be the total funding that districts usually get per student, but it might help.

State lawmakers haven’t filed the proposal, but there are promising signs it’ll pass once they do. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has said he supports sending extra funding to districts enrolling new students, and the proposal is coming from lawmakers on the powerful Joint Budget Committee, which plays a major role in how the state spends its money.

Johnson said that Aurora isn’t waiting to see that money transferred before hiring needed positions or addressing needs. He hopes the state will reimburse some of the expenses if the money does come.

While leaders say they aren’t cutting budgets or making adjustments, they are starting to think ahead. Maybe that will mean having roaming teams that can go to the schools most impacted on a short term basis to deal with the work of helping students new to the country.

“The hard part is no one knows how long this phenomenon will last,” Johnson said. “We are trying to start putting in some thought in the long-term, if there’s a better system.”

For now, schools are helping new students from South America adapt.

“When a new student enrolls who is new to the country it’s also a matter of the daily school routines — it’s also teaching them the routines of a typical school day,” Johnson said.

That can take up a lot of time for school staff. But not all schools are receiving high numbers of new students. Schools near shelters, apartments or housing where agencies have helped migrants get settled are enrolling more students.

Educators say they aren’t currently thinking about transferring students to different schools to avoid overcrowded classrooms, but Greeley leaders say they have changed enrollment boundaries when schools were getting too full in previous situations. They might consider it if the enrollment boom continues.

School educators say, still, they want kids in school, they understand that children must learn and the faster they can connect them to educators, the better.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit schools are enrolling more migrant students. Can the district meet their needs?

2024-02-26T19:29:50+00:00

As an influx of school-aged migrant and refugee children have resettled with their families in Detroit in recent weeks, schools are working to quickly adapt to meet their needs.

Some are more prepared than others.

Detroit Public Schools Community District campuses on the southwest side of the city have long served diverse student groups and have many Spanish-speaking teachers and administrators who can easily communicate with parents. But a large number of students who have recently migrated to the U.S. are being placed in available shelter beds on the city’s east side, where schools have historically served children with different needs.

“It’s no fault of the schools,” said Elizabeth Orozco-Vasquez, CEO of Freedom House Detroit, a nonprofit that supports asylum seekers and refugees. “It’s just that they’ve never had to prepare for that before. Meeting the needs of a new population of kids is a big ask to put on an already tasked school system.”

Translation services in those schools are often limited. Additionally, transportation for kids to attend schools in southwest Detroit can be difficult to arrange, advocates say. The district is required by the federal McKinney-Vento Homelessness Assistance Act to help students without a fixed address maintain school stability.

“We are seeing a lot of school-aged children come in, primarily in schools outside of southwest Detroit that aren’t necessarily prepared for children coming from other countries who don’t speak English,” said Orozco-Vasquez. “It’s a resource that has to be built.”

About 70 families who recently arrived from Venezuela enrolled their children in DPSCD, according to the district, and the number continues to grow. Administrators say they are providing language interpretation and translation, and training staff to understand new students’ unique needs. In the long term, the district is considering establishing newcomer programs, which would centralize students at specific schools to streamline services for migrant and refugee children.

Detroit hasn’t seen the large numbers of migrants and refugees arriving that large cities like Chicago and New York have in recent months. But some of the families arriving in Detroit are coming from those cities because shelters and humanitarian organizations there are overwhelmed.

DPSCD is working to meet students’ needs

Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said in an email all schools in the district are now receiving support as they adapt to meet the needs of migrant students. Staff are being trained to use translation tools, to identify curricular resources to help students learn English, and to address the trauma the kids may have experienced.

The district has formed a small team of teacher training and support coordinators specializing in English language learning to deploy to schools with newcomer students, he said. DPSCD is also continuing to collaborate with community members through its Bilingual Parent Advisory Council as well as the Office of Family and Community Engagement to meet the families’ needs.

Staff can request a live interpreter and document translations, said Vitti. The district also offers over-the-phone and remote video interpreters, and students and staff are able to use Microsoft Translate.

“The district is working with all school leaders and teachers to make sure that they are fully aware of these resources and use them consistently to communicate with families who need language services,” said Vitti.

Part of the challenge, said Orozco-Vasquez, is that the newly arrived students are speaking many languages. In addition to Spanish-speakers, some speak Portuguese or French.

Some nonprofit organizations work with school districts to fill gaps in providing language support to refugee students. Samaritas, a faith-based statewide nonprofit, works with DPSCD.

“If there is no comprehensive ELL program in place, we work with the school on providing that,” Rawan Alramahi, supervisor of Samaritas’ school impact program.

Funding from a $94.4 million settlement – from a 2016 lawsuit that alleged Michigan failed to teach Detroit students to read and described inadequate education for English language learners – will likely allow the school system to hire more academic interventionists to work with English language learners, the superintendent said. A task force formed to identify how DPSCD should spend the settlement recently recommended the district do so.

The settlement funding will also be used to help the district determine whether there is a need for more newcomer programs to be developed at schools in DPSCD to “better serve first- and second-year immigrants,” Vitti said. There is one existing program at Western International High School that provides academic and social support to newcomer families.

“Through this strategy, newly arrived students with limited English skills would be assigned to these schools so we can concentrate resources for support, such as ELL teachers and [academic interventionists],” said Vitti.

The planned Health Hub at Western International, which will provide medical, dental, and mental health care, will also have a resource center with services for newly arrived families, said Vitti. Other Health Hubs, which will expand over the next three years at schools across the district, may also have the same focus, depending on need, according to the superintendent.

For migrant students who experience homelessness or are housed in shelters, the district will provide all the services guaranteed by the McKinney-Vento Act, which mandates that unhoused students be allowed to quickly enroll in schools, stay in the same school even if they move outside of enrollment boundaries, and receive transportation to their schools regardless of the distance, among other protections.

Overall, the district’s system for identifying students who need services through the act has improved, said Vitti. The need for transportation services with that funding has increased in the community across the board and is not unique to newcomer or refugee students.

“Newcomer and refugee students are not always homeless, but when they are, we are committed to providing transportation services,” said Vitti.

In the past, there were concerns about DPSCD’s ability to educate English language learners, who graduate from high school at lower rates compared to their English-speaking peers. Parents expressed a need for more language access in the district, and felt their concerns were ignored.

Inequities for ELL students is not unique to DPSCD. Michigan ranks among the lowest in the nation for funding for students who are not native English speakers, according to an analysis by The Education Trust-Midwest.

Last year, the state passed a historic school budget that provided $1.3 million more in funding for ELL students.

Some migrant families arrive from Chicago, New York, Texas

Most of Detroit’s migrant students have come from Venezuela, according to the school district.

Others are coming from Columbia, Angola, Senegal, Haiti, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Orozco-Vasquez said there is a mix of families coming from larger cities like New York and Chicago as well as various cities in Texas, where officials have struggled to keep up with the growing need for services for migrants, as well as people coming directly from their countries of origin.

Samaritas is currently serving more than 250 school-age children, and has recently seen more families coming from Venezuela and Cuba, along with families from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine.

Both Freedom House and Samaritas said most of the newly arrived school-age children they serve have enrolled in DPSCD, and some are attending charter schools in Wayne County.

The increase in the number of families migrating to Michigan isn’t expected to slow anytime soon – officials expect to see a 40% increase in refugees settling in the state this year, which would amount to more than 3,600 people. As demand for temporary housing grows, the Office of Global Michigan this week asked residents to open their homes as part of a refugee support program.

Michigan has long been a destination for refugees and asylum seekers. Though the recent influx of migrants is sizable, it’s not the largest the state has experienced.

In 2013, more than 3,400 Iraqi refugees resettled in Michigan. And after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, more than 2,000 refugees came to live in the state.

DPSCD has also previously seen influxes of migrants. More than 40 refugees from Afghanistan enrolled in the district in May 2022.

Navigating a foreign school system

Ivan Nakonechngi, 13, works on his computer at home on Wed., Feb., 21, 2024 in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

In addition to DPSCD and other schools in Wayne County, refugees are also being placed and enrolling in schools in Macomb, Oakland, and Genesee Counties.

One mother, Svitlana Nakonechna, 33, arrived in the U.S. three years ago after fleeing the war in Ukraine with her son, Ivan Nakonechngi, now 13.

Nakonechna is still learning English, and she communicates with Ivan’s teachers at South Hills Middle School in Bloomfield Hills Schools through an online translator application in email and on video calls. The mother tries to keep up with Ivan’s grades and when his work is due.

“Usually, I keep track of that since she’s not really good with English,” said Ivan, who began learning English in school in Ukraine.

Ivan Nakonechngi, 13, left, poses for a portrait with his mother, Svitlana Nakonechna, 33, in their home on Wed., Feb., 21, 2024 in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Nakonechna said through an interpreter that she doesn’t know much about the curriculum Ivan is being taught, but she trusts he’s learning because she sees he’s engaged in his school work.

Though her sponsors and Samaritas have been helpful in enrolling her son in school and navigating the system, Nakonechna worries what may happen if she has to move out of the housing she receives through her employer to another school district.

“If we move from this place to another city and I need to find a new school, I still will need help because I don’t know how to handle it by myself,” she said.

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Almost half of migrant families who got 60-day eviction notices moved out of NYC shelters

2024-03-01T19:34:40+00:00

This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

Beatriz, a Venezuelan mother of two young girls, got a 60-day notice to leave their Midtown migrant shelter last November.

The next day, she said, she was out hunting for apartments.

Working under the table in an Irish pub in Hell’s Kitchen, she’d been able to save some money, pooling it with her boyfriend and a cousin and his family. It was enough for the upfront costs to rent a three-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights they would all share. By the time her 60 days ran out, Beatriz and her girls had already moved out of the shelter.

“We’re totally thankful,” Beatriz, who asked that her last name be withheld fearing immigration consequences, said in Spanish. “We’ve been given so much.”

Beatriz is among the first swath of migrant families with children to see their time in city shelters run out under a newly implemented city policy for migrant families in certain shelters. Notices started coming due in early January, and of the around 7,500 parents and children who reached their 60-day limit, half have moved out, according data through late February from the mayor’s office.

A further breakdown of the data released by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander’s last month on the 60-day policy found that of about 4,750 families who’d had their time expire through early February, 29% of them, or about 1,300 families, reapplied for shelter and were transferred to new shelters. The remaining 16% stayed in the same shelter where they were originally placed.

Among those who’ve gotten the notices are families like Beatriz’ who came in the fall of 2022 and had more than a year to find work and make connections in New York City.

But many who received the notices have entered the migrant shelter system since the rule has been in place, like families living at the sprawling tent facility at Floyd Bennett Field, or those at a recently opened family shelter in an old warehouse in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill, who’ve had much less time to get their bearings in a new country.

Migrants leaving the Row Hotel stored their belongings on the sidewalk before heading to a new shelter, Jan. 4, 2024.

The mayor’s office didn’t return a request for additional comment on the new data, but members of the Eric Adams administration have repeatedly defended the shelter stay limits, crediting them for driving down costs. They also say the policy is keeping the number of migrants in city shelters — which hovers at around 64,000 people — from continuing to grow. The numbers have even slightly dipped in recent weeks, despite more than a thousand newcomers arriving each week.

For adult migrants who are subject to strict 30-day shelter limits, with days or weekslong waits to get another cot, many have resorted to sleeping on the streets or trains, in overcrowded mosques, or unsanctioned commercial spaces. This week, Gothamist reported on one couple living in a school bus.

The Adams administration has repeatedly said its main goal is not to have families with children sleeping on the streets. In all, city officials said they’ve given 9,100 families shelter eviction notices so far. While some like Beatriz have landed on their feet, critics of the 60-day policy say many more parents and children who can’t afford to move out have been put through unnecessary turmoil.

“The 60-day shelter limit for families with children is one of the cruelest policies to come from City Hall in generations, evicting families from shelter in the middle of winter, and displacing kids from their schools in the middle of the school year,” said Lander, who has promised to investigate the policy. He pointed out City Hall has relatively little information on what happens to migrants when they leave shelters.

“Where did those nearly 2,500 parents go? Were they in a dangerously overcrowded basement? Were they sleeping on the street? We have no idea.”

‘Families going dark’

Schools with migrant students forced to move because of the 60-day rule have been grappling with the logistical and emotional fallout of the disruptions.

“Just said goodbye to another four newcomers who are moving away after being with us for a year,” said one Manhattan principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Lots of tears from the kids and adults.”

Upper West Side parent Naveed Hasan, who sits on the city’s school board, the Panel for Educational Policy, has been part of an informal group of parents, school staff, and local elected officials working to find students who disappear suddenly from classes.

“It’s really like families going dark and then leaving people really confused. Where are they, and how can we help them?” Hasan said. “And I think this is sort of the intended effect of a policy.”

Testifying at a City Council hearing Friday, Molly Schaeffer, the head of the city’s office of Asylum Seeker Operations, said that 90% of children who were evicted in the month of January remained in their same school, though she didn’t give specifics. “We really did prioritize education and the education of the youngest children when making these types of choices and moves,” she said, adding the office tried to keep families in the same borough as their youngest child’s school.

Migrants leaving the Row Hotel stored their belongings on the sidewalk before heading to a new shelter, Jan. 4, 2024.

Schools that recently got influxes of new students are already seeing them transferred to shelters in other parts of the city, leaving staffers with whiplash.

“In a month we had more than 50 students…and now I don’t know what’s going to happen with them,” said Carolina Zafra, a teacher at P.S. 46 in Clinton Hill, among several schools in the area that received a sudden surge in students, following the opening of a new shelter for families in a converted warehouse.

School staffers knew the new students were subject to the 60-day shelter stay limit, but were holding out hope that city officials wouldn’t enforce it, Zafra said.

The school wrote letters for families to bring back to the shelter showing they were enrolled in a nearby school in the hopes it might get them a reprieve. But when teachers came back from mid-winter break this week, they found that many of their students had already been moved. Zafra has one student who’s now commuting to the school from Manhattan and she heard about another living by JFK airport.

“I’m more concerned about all the emotional distress those children already experienced and now again moving them from something I thought was settled for them,” she said.

One mom who arrived from Venezuela in December and enrolled her two kids at P.S. 46 said her family was transferred from the Hall Street shelter to a shelter in Midtown Manhattan last week.

The mom, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she never considered transferring her kids to a new school, even though her commute is now close to an hour.

“They have a lot of patience with the children,” she said of the school, in Spanish. “I didn’t want to change their school because they feel good there.”

Homeless students in New York City are entitled to transportation under federal law so that they can remain in the same school if they move. Kids and parents in temporary housing are eligible for free MetroCards, and younger students can also get assigned to school bus routes, though that process can take some time.

But the mom said their MetroCards are still pending, and since the family has no income to pay the fares, they often have to sneak through open emergency gates. Her husband has already received a fine for doing so.

Still, the Venezuelan mom considers herself lucky compared to other families from the school who were placed in shelters even further away, she said.

‘I felt such relief’

Among those 16% of families who’ve been able to remain in their shelters, according to the data from the comptroller, many are living at the remote tent shelter located at Floyd Bennett Field. Some describe their extended stay there as both a blessing and a curse.

Geraldine, a 38-year-old mother of three from Venezuela, who moved into Floyd Bennett Field last December, said getting used to the tents was a challenge: the long walks in the cold across a vast marshland to the nearest bus stop, the bathrooms and showers in trailers outside of the living quarters, the lack of privacy and constant cries of collicky children. The disruptions during severe weather have also been hard, like the January evening when the city evacuated thousands of residents to a nearby school due to high winds.

Venezuelan migrants Geraldine, Jhon and their daughter Yorliannys, leave the Floyd Bennett Field family shelter for the day, Jan. 25, 2024.

Still, as her eviction date approached she prayed the family would get to stay put, dreading the disruption of packing up and starting again somewhere new. The family collected their belongings the night before their mid-February move-out day, still unsure what would happen. But when her husband checked in with staff the next morning, he was told they could get another 60 days in the same cubicle.

“I felt such relief,” Geraldine said, who asked that her full name not be used to protect her family’s identity. “We didn’t have to go all the way to [Midtown] with the kids,” she said, referring to the process of reapplying for shelter at the Roosevelt Hotel. Instead their kids continued at their schools without interruption.

“The idea is to finish our time here, save up money and move out,” she said.

‘I feel good, and I’m afraid, at the same time’

Beatriz’ hunt for their new home was difficult, as it is for many New Yorkers. She fronted $500 to someone promising an apartment and spent a day standing in the rain outside what she thought was her new apartment in Astoria before realizing it was a scam.

When a rental finally came through, she and her daughters moved out little by little, shuttling their belongings on the subway over the course of several days. After the winter break, Beatriz pulled her kids out of school and transferred them to ones closer to their new Crown Heights home, unable to make the bi-borough commute. Her 7-year-old daughter seems to be adjusting, while her 11-year-old is having a more difficult time.

“She misses all her friends from class,” Beatriz said.

Beatriz relishes being able to cook for herself and the family again, something she couldn’t do for more than a year living in a hotel room. She’s enjoying the privacy and peace of having their own place. But she also feels the anxiety of so many New Yorkers living paycheck to paycheck, that a little disruption could lead to an inability to make rent and send her back to shelter.

“I feel good, and I’m afraid, at the same time,” Beatriz said. “And the fear, because if one of us loses our job, god willing, how would we pay rent?”

Gwynne Hogan covers Brooklyn for THE CITY.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Donald Trump falsely claims migrants are displacing NYC students. The city has empty seats.

2024-03-05T23:12:29+00:00

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Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed this week that migrant students are displacing other children from New York City’s schools.

In fact, the city’s public schools have struggled in recent years with the opposite problem: too many empty seats.

Enrollment has ticked up slightly this school year, thanks in part to an influx of migrant students, though still remains about 9% below pre-pandemic levels. Education Department officials have said boosting school rosters is a top priority, as lower enrollment can lead to smaller budgets, mergers, and closures.

In an interview with the Right Side Broadcasting Network on Monday, Trump claimed without evidence that “we have children that are no longer going to school” because of the influx of migrants.

“I’m not blaming them,” he said. “I’m saying they put the students in the place of our students like in New York City. We have these wonderful students who are going to school — all of a sudden they no longer have a seat.”

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request to elaborate on his comments. There is no evidence that any students have been left without a school seat due to the arrival of new migrants, and an Education Department spokesperson said the claims were false.

“We will continue to work with students, families, and partners to ensure that newcomer students have what they need in our public schools and that our schools are well equipped to support these needs,” Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein wrote in a statement.

Immigration advocates also blasted Trump’s comments.

“The idea that we somehow don’t have space or that children are being removed from schools is just completely unfounded,” said Liza Schwartzwald, director of economic justice and family empowerment at the New York Immigration Coalition.

Trump, the likely Republican nominee for president, has sought to make immigration a centerpiece of his reelection campaign and has escalated anti-immigrant rhetoric, promising to revive a ban from some Muslim-majority countries and refusing asylum claims. He has also swept discussion of education into some campaign stops, claiming at a Saturday rally in Virginia that New York schools are overwhelmed teaching students who speak languages “that nobody ever heard of.”

Since the summer of 2022, Republican governors of southern border states have sent busloads of migrants to cities with Democratic leaders, including New York. Over that period, about 36,000 children who live in temporary housing have enrolled in the city’s public schools — including 18,000 this school year — many of them migrants. (City officials do not ask for a student’s immigration status when they enroll.)

The city’s Education Department is required by law to provide a seat to any school-age child who needs one regardless of their immigration status. Many school communities have worked hard to welcome migrant students and provide appropriate instruction in English and their home language.

And while there is no evidence that migrants have displaced other students, some parent leaders and other groups have protested the new arrivals.

In January, Brooklyn’s James Madison High School pivoted to remote learning for one day after migrant families were temporarily housed there because severe wind threatened tent shelters at Floyd Bennett Field that housed newcomers. The episode generated vitriol from some families and morphed into a talking point for right-wing pundits. But several students and parents were perplexed by the outrage and noted the disruption was minor.

“The hostility towards the migrants was definitely uncalled for,” senior Zola Zephirin told Chalkbeat. “These are people, they have families, they come here and attempt to make a better life, just like many of the students at Madison.”

Schools have sometimes struggled to accommodate newcomers. The enrollment process has been bumpy for some migrant families as the city scrambled to keep up, and schools often can’t hire enough bilingual educators, a long-standing shortage area. At the same time, city officials have tweaked the school funding formula to funnel more dollars to schools with more students living in temporary housing — which benefits schools with more migrant children.

For his part, New York Mayor Eric Adams has sent mixed messages about the influx of migrants. Last year he claimed the influx of migrants would “destroy” the city, drawing outrage from immigrant groups, and has blamed them for cuts to city services. But he also celebrated the uptick in public school enrollment, fueled in part by new arrivals.

Some advocates, including Schwartzwald, see parallels between Trump and Adams’ rhetoric and worry about the climate it creates for asylum seekers, some of which has reverberated in schools. Some students at Newcomers High School, for instance, have sought a name change in part because they fear the label “puts a target on us.”

“When Mayor Adams uses rhetoric where he — just like Trump — tries to create an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ — what he’s saying is not all immigrants are New Yorkers,” Schwartzwald said. “Anyone who comes to New York to make a life is a New Yorker as far as we’re concerned.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Many migrant students need mental health support. Here’s why this program is a go-to for schools.

2024-03-11T09:00:00+00:00

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When thousands of Syrian families fleeing violence resettled in Canada several years ago, Ontario’s school mental health agency wanted to give schools tools to help refugee children process their traumatic journeys and adjust to their new lives.

The children didn’t necessarily need intensive support. But kids were bursting into tears and struggling to explain how they felt. Parents, too, noticed their usually social children had become more withdrawn and were struggling to make friends. That was especially common after kids had been in Canada for a few months and the honeymoon period ended.

So a team of experts in child mental health put their heads together and developed a program for newcomers that focuses on their strengths and who they can turn to for support. Known as STRONG, the program is now used across the U.S. in several cities serving lots of newcomers, including Chicago, Boston, Seattle, New York, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., and Little Rock, Arkansas. Many others are asking for training, as schools struggle to meet the needs of students who’ve been through difficult journeys with limited school mental health staff, and even fewer bilingual ones.

STRONG, which stands for Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups, can’t solve everything. Some kids may still need more intensive mental health support — and finding the time and staff to run these groups can be challenging. But many experts, educators, and students themselves see the intervention as a promising tool to help newcomers forge connections and head off mental health struggles before they turn into a crisis.

“They’ve just really appreciated the opportunity to connect with other kids,” said Lisa Baron, a psychologist who trains schools to use STRONG and directs the Boston-based Center for Trauma Care in Schools. “A lot of them said that they just had not really known that other kids were feeling the same way as they were.”

Why some newcomers struggle with mental health

Newcomer students can be refugees or asylum-seekers or the children of undocumented immigrants. Some arrive with families, some arrive alone. Some have been in the U.S. for just a few days or weeks, while others have been here longer. And while their experiences vary, they’ve often faced various hardships, from hunger to abuse.

Many children did not feel in control during their travels, and now crave stability and predictability.

It can also be difficult for newcomer families to access mental health services in the U.S. — driving home the importance of offering help at school. There’s often stigma around seeking treatment, and some families fear that doing so could put them at risk for deportation.

Here’s how STRONG typically works: The school identifies a group of students who are close in age and relatively new to the U.S. who could benefit from extra support. Then the school makes sure parents are on board, which can mean having careful conversations, especially if families are unfamiliar with schools offering mental health support.

The group meets for 10 sessions, usually during the school day. Early sessions help students understand that it’s normal to feel overwhelmed or stressed sometimes. Kids learn different relaxation techniques, such as curling their toes into the floor as if they were standing in a mud puddle, or visualizing the sights and smells of a favorite place.

In later sessions, they learn coping and problem-solving skills, such as how to map out steps to achieve a goal. Kids who are shy about speaking English could identify people they’d feel safe practicing with.

“The coping skills [are] what will stay with you forever,” one Ontario student told Canadian researchers for a 2019 report. “Whenever you are in a stressful situation, you will always remember what to do.”

In STRONG, students learn various problem-solving and coping skills.

What makes STRONG unique and appealing to many schools, said Colleen Cicchetti, a pediatric psychologist who helped develop the intervention, is that it takes a strengths-based approach.

“There were strengths that were inside you that you had in your home country that are still with you, here, today — how do we build on them?” said Cicchetti, who directs the Center for Childhood Resilience at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and now trains schools on how to use STRONG. “We really want young people and their parents to say: ‘This is a part of who I am and what I’ve experienced, but it shouldn’t define who I am entirely.’”

That’s what attracted the attention of mental health and school staff in the Madison, Wisconsin area. The district tried tweaking another group that addresses student trauma to help newcomers, but realized it wasn’t quite meeting their needs.

Kids need to “talk about good memories and coping strategies, not necessarily the exposure to the traumatic event,” said Carrie Klein, a school mental health coach for Madison Metro schools, which is considering using STRONG.

For Jennifer Moorhouse, a teacher who works with English learners at Brighton Park Elementary School in Chicago, STRONG has been transformative for her and her students.

Related: Amid Chicago’s migrant influx, one school is trying to help newcomer students navigate trauma

Over the last year, Moorhouse has run four STRONG groups — known as “clubs” at her school — alongside school counselor Stephanie Carrillo. The program helped Moorhouse get to know newcomers’ families, and has made students comfortable to seek her out when they need essentials like toothpaste or body wash.

Brighton Park Elementary School threw a quinceañera for newcomer students who were sad they would miss celebrating in their home country.

The group has helped in unexpected ways, too. When kids said they weren’t eating at school because they didn’t like the food, Moorhouse figured out they did like Ritz crackers and Skinny popcorn, so she keeps those on hand. And when she found out some newcomers were crying in the bathroom, upset that they were going to miss their quinceñera back home, the group threw a big party at school, complete with balloons and empanadas.

“The students really have created this bond with Ms. Moorhouse — that’s their person,” said Cecilia Mendoza, the assistant principal. “Every student needs someone. For someone new entering the country, entering a new school, having someone is even more important.”

Brighton Park is one of 83 schools across the district that’s been trained in STRONG, with another 50 schools in line to be trained next school year.

Why talking about their journeys can help newcomers

When experts first developed STRONG, they imagined it would be delivered by social workers, school counselors and other mental health staff, since many newcomers have experienced trauma.

But given that mental health professionals are often stretched or in short supply, more schools are asking for others to be trained, too, said Sharon Hoover, a psychiatry professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine who helped create STRONG.

Now, many schools run STRONG sessions with two adults. A teacher with language or cultural skills can act as the interpreter, while the staffer with mental health training takes on tasks such as screening children for post-traumatic stress.

“We don’t want to be irresponsible with the curriculum and just throw it into the hands of anybody who has no mental health training at all,” Hoover said. “But on the other hand, we don’t want to restrict it in a way that’s going to lead to it not getting to students who might benefit.”

On a recent Tuesday morning, Hoover and Bianca Ramos, a STRONG trainer, showed what a one-on-one session that invites students to share about their journey can look like during a virtual training for two dozen school staffers.

The group, mostly social workers and school counselors from Connecticut, had gathered to learn strategies to help newcomer students from many parts of the world, including Haiti, Guatemala, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, and Ukraine.

Related: We are facing a migrant mental health crisis. More school social workers could help

In the video demonstration, Hoover sat beside Ramos in the corner of a blue-walled room. Ramos, a Chicago-based social worker, played the role of a 13-year-old girl who’d fled Guatemala without time to say goodbye to family and friends after her father was killed. Hoover explained that talking about something hard can be like stepping into cold water.

“The more we do it, slowly and gradually, usually the more comfortable we get,” Hoover said. “You don’t have to dive right in.”

In early sessions of STRONG, students learn various relaxation techniques and that it's OK to feel stress sometimes.

In the scenario, as the young girl neared the U.S.-Mexico border, robbers threatened to take her family’s few belongings. Hoover asked how she got through that time, using it as an opportunity to draw out the child’s strengths.

“I had this picture of my mom and I just remember looking at it, and trying to stay hopeful that I was going to be able to see her again,” Ramos said. And she had her little sister to watch out for: “I was like a mom to her.”

“That’s amazing,” Hoover replied, pointing out how brave and caring the child had been.

Later, Hoover asked if the girl was having trouble sleeping, reliving any memories, or feeling sad a lot. She wasn’t, but thoughts of her dad did pop into her head in class, making it hard to concentrate. Hoover made sure that wasn’t happening too much, and then kept the door open to talk more in the future if anything changed.

In Chicago, Moorhouse has seen that some kids feel relieved when they share about their journey. But she also cautions that it can be a lot for other students and teachers to take in. After one student shared details that made Moorhouse tear up later, she realized she couldn’t probe too deeply in her conversations with the student, and needed to let the school counselor step in.

“We’re not therapists,” she said. “That’s very important for teachers to realize.”

STRONG can help students, but there are challenges

STRONG is still being rigorously evaluated in the U.S. But research conducted by Western University in Canada, where STRONG was first piloted during the 2017-18 school year, has shown promising results.

Evaluations from across Ontario found the program helped kids build trust, increase their confidence, and develop a sense of belonging at school. Students reported that STRONG helped them feel more welcome and connect with their peers.

STRONG can also shift school culture and help the entire staff become more attuned to newcomers’ needs. When Moorhouse notices certain patterns of behavior, she shares that with other teachers, so they can keep an eye out.

That could be explaining why some kids may not want to take off sweaters or jackets — after border agents took everything they had except for what they were wearing at the time — or that playing certain sounds, like chirping birds or rushing water, could be upsetting to kids whose journey involved swimming or walking through the jungle.

There can be practical challenges. School leaders may be hesitant to pull kids out of class for STRONG when they are struggling academically. Elizabeth Paquette, who’s part of the team that trains school staff in Ontario, said it can be tricky to get enough kids together in smaller schools and rural communities without resorting to virtual groups that can make it harder for students to make friends.

And if groups use more than two languages, the interpretation needs can take away from the group’s conversational flow.

Still, Moorhouse said the group can be a place for kids to talk about those academic struggles, whether they’re lost in class or frustrated because they already know the content, but can’t yet express themselves. This year, especially, kids want to talk about school stress even more than their journeys.

“They were struggling with: ‘Do I give up?’” Moorhouse said. And her message was: “Let’s keep finding other ways to work through this. What are your thoughts?”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Apps are helping teachers communicate with families that don’t speak English

2024-03-13T22:36:31+00:00

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Emma Gonzalez Gutierrez has struggled to communicate with the teachers of her five children for years.

She’s tried to stay engaged. She’s attended meetings, gravitated toward Spanish-speaking staff, and relied on translators, including her kids, over the years.

Now, thanks to an app that McElwain Elementary, her Adams 12 school, started using this year, she’s found opportunities to engage in new ways with her youngest child’s education.

Recently, the kindergarten teacher texted her on the app, ReachWell, which allows the teacher to text in English and parents to receive the messages in their own language. The teacher told Gonzalez Gutierrez that her daughter had won a student of the month-type award and invited her to come to the school to surprise her daughter when the award was presented. The small gesture that meant so much to Gonzalez Gutierrez.

“For me it was very exciting,” Gonzalez Gutierrez said. “It was so valuable that she was able to let me know.”

ReachWell and similar translation apps have become more common, and for some teachers, they’ve become crucial as educators work to communicate with the rising number of families that don’t speak English. The apps often allow the communications between parents and teachers to feel personal. Some teachers say it has helped parents open up about issues their child or family is having, which then helps teachers better engage with students.

In addition to seeing text from teachers in their native language on ReachWell, parents can respond in their native language and teachers see the replies in English.

Kayli Brooks, a teacher at Tollgate Elementary in Aurora, uses the app Talking Points, which also allows her to text parents. It also translates texts between parents and educators but does not require families to download an app.

“Families will share that they’re struggling with transportation, or here’s why maybe they’re acting out, or they might text me and say ‘hey this thing happened at home and I think my child is going to be really sad at school today,’” Brooks said. “It’s a huge deal. Families want to be involved in their child’s education no matter where they’re from, no matter what language they speak.”

Brooks said that since her Aurora school began using the app in 2020, she is much more successful at collecting permission forms, for example.

With migrant families who are new to the country and are “kind of overwhelmed,” she said, texting them through the app has also helped them better understand basic information they need to get their children started in school.

Communication that feels personal, through a text, is often more manageable for families than directing parents to online forms and resources, she said.

Sara Olson, principal of McElwain Elementary, said the ReachWell translation app is “a tool that provides equitable access.”

“It’s almost mind boggling to me that some of these folks have maneuvered schools for years not having access,” Olson said. “As a parent I can’t imagine not having access to the information, to the teachers. Every child and family member has a right to have that access.”

Olson said she did not have trouble having all families at her school download the app.

Zuben Bastani created the app ReachWell after he said he saw that some families at his child’s Denver school weren’t getting all the communications. He said he saw children excluded from field trips after arriving at school, unknowingly unprepared — wearing sneakers on the day of a snowshoeing trip, for example — because their families hadn’t understood the school communications.

“It became real apparent, real fast, which families were aware and showed up and which weren’t,” Bastani said.

The app is in use in many schools and districts in the metro area and across the country in places like Pittsburgh. In addition to schools, the company is also partnering with some emergency service agencies to provide emergency notifications — such as shelter-in-place or evacuation orders during natural disasters — that non-English speaking populations can receive in their home language.

Jean Boylan, a community liaison at McMeen Elementary in Denver, also uses ReachWell at her school, but said she also has used Google’s translation app on her phone to greet parents face to face as they pick up students from school. She said staff are all looking for as many ways as possible to communicate.

In her school, concerns about whether new immigrant families have access to the internet, have led staff to start printing materials too. McMeen is one of a couple dozen Denver schools that have enrolled a significant number of new students from Venezuela and elsewhere this year.

But anytime they can communicate with the ReachWell app, it saves time and energy, Boylan said.

The app helps because there are so many languages spoken by families. She said there’s a map in her office with at least 27 countries highlighted, reflecting where the school’s current families come from.

Bastani said ReachWell has found that because parents have to download the app and self-select from more than 130 languages what their preferred language is, many schools find that they’ve been undercounting how many languages their families speak.

On average, they discover 25% more languages after a few months, ReachWell leaders said.

Boylan is now working with Bastani to build out a resource page that ReachWell offers in the app for families. It may include ways for families to access help such as for food or housing.

For parents like Gonzalez Gutierrez, the personal communications they have with teachers are the most critical.

Gonzalez Gutierrez said earlier this year, she realized her kindergartener had become frustrated with an online program the school used for kids to learn math. It was causing the child stress and fear and Gonzalez Gutierrez said she didn’t know how to talk to the teacher about it — until she realized that she could text her.

Letting the teacher know what the problem was allowed them to work together to solve it.

“It’s worth it,” Gonzalez Gutierrez said. “It’s been such a gift for me.”

This story has been updated to reflect that users do not have to download the ReachWell app to get messages through ReachWell, though the downloading the app is an option.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

‘Happier families, happier students’: How Denver’s community hubs are helping migrants and others

2024-03-11T21:35:17+00:00

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While her 5-year-old son attends kindergarten at west Denver’s Colfax Elementary School, Maelka attends class too. In a trailer near the playground, she and three other moms learn English.

On a recent Thursday, the group practiced letters and numbers by playing bingo.

“B eleven,” the teacher called out.

“Eleven! Eleven!” Maelka said. Then she translated the number into Spanish — “once,” pronounced on-say — for her classmates.

The trailer at Colfax Elementary is one of Denver Public Schools’ six “community hubs,” and the English language classes are among the most popular offerings. Launched in 2022 by Superintendent Alex Marrero, the community hubs were meant to take a two-generation approach to improving students’ lives by helping both children and parents with everything from food and clothing to financial counseling and mobile medical appointments.

Now, as more than 3,500 migrant students have enrolled in DPS since the beginning of the school year, the hubs are increasingly serving their families as they build new lives in Denver. The influx has stretched the hubs’ capacity, but district leaders said they remain committed to soliciting more donations and grant money to support the work.

“I need to learn English to understand, to work — and to learn, too,” Maelka said in Spanish. “It is important to know the language in the country where you are.”

Maelka and her family arrived in Denver from Venezuela in early December. After spending time in the city’s shelters, they found a house to rent near Colfax Elementary. Chalkbeat is withholding Maelka’s last name to protect her privacy.

The free classes do more than teach English, which offers the promise of higher-paying jobs. The hubs also foster a sense of community, said Manager Jackie Bell. On Maelka’s birthday, another mom baked her a cake and brought it to class.

The hubs are also a safety net. When one of the moms showed up to class in pain with a tooth infection, hub staff scrambled to connect her with a free dental clinic. When staff saw students were walking to school without warm jackets, the hub got a grant to buy brand new kid-sized puffy coats for students. When a grandmother who’s raising a grandson with autism told hub staff he would only eat one brand of rice, they were able to stock it in their mini market.

“That’s the message to our DPS parents that says, ‘We want you here,’” Bell said.

Karen Rodriguez picks up snacks for her daughter Carely, 11 months, at the mini market inside the community hub at John H. Amesse Elementary School.

There’s ‘magic’ in the hubs’ differences

The community hubs are an expansion of a previous program called the Family and Community Engagement Centers, often shortened to FACE Centers. The hub at John H. Amesse Elementary in far northeast Denver was one of two original FACE Centers.

Marrero toured the center at John H. Amesse early in his superintendency. On her wall, Manager Carla Duarte has a framed map of the city on which Marrero scribbled his vision to have a similar center in every region of Denver. Now, two years later, the six hubs offer the same programming that the centers offered and more, depending in part on the hub’s space.

Two hubs have micro grocery stores with fresh produce and frozen meat, while others have food pantries stocked with dry and canned goods. All hubs distribute diapers, but some partner with a local nonprofit to give away car seats and strollers. At least one has a thrift store-sized used clothing boutique. Some are now partnering with Denver Health, which parks its mobile clinic on the curb and sees patients for half-hour appointments.

The hubs’ staffing differs, too. They all connect parents to programs that help pay their bills, but some have financial coaches and classes on household budgeting. Others help parents find jobs. The workforce development coordinator at the far northeast hub recently helped a migrant father who’d worked as a barber in Venezuela for 24 years get a job at a Denver barber shop.

When a hub doesn’t have a particular service, the staff refer families to one that does.

“That’s the magic of the community hubs,” Duarte said. “We’re all so different.”

The hub at John H. Amesse is among the biggest and busiest. Its spaces are sprinkled throughout the school in converted classrooms and once-empty offices.

On a recent Wednesday morning, adult Spanish-speaking students in a GED class were practicing math and celebrating with pink-frosted cupcakes a classmate who passed their tests.

In a small room off the library, two women rocked the babies of the GED students. One of the women, a refugee from Afghanistan with children in DPS, first came to the community hub seeking help paying her family’s rent. Through a translator who spoke Dari, the woman’s native language, Duarte said the woman asked an important question.

“She just looked at me and said, ‘Do you have any jobs for me?’” Duarte said.

Duarte was looking to fill a child care position, but she was unsure about the language barrier. Nearly all hub employees speak Spanish, but none spoke Dari. But DPS said yes, and the woman is now learning English through the hub’s classes — and picking up Spanish, too.

“She’s so amazing,” Duarte said. “It’s like the best thing we ever did.”

There’s a similar story across the hall, where a former participant leads a “play and learn” class for toddlers and their parents, who on this day were busy blowing soap bubbles with straws.

Many of the “play and learn” parents also attend GED or English classes at the hub. Ingrid Alemán had to stop because her 2-year-old son, Dylan, cried too much when he was separated from her in the child care room. But the mother and son still come to “play and learn.”

“He’s learning how to socialize with other kids,” Alemán said in Spanish. “And as a mom, it helps me to be with other moms who can give me advice. Because in the house —”

“You and the kids —” Duarte said.

“In the house, it’s crazy,” Alemán said, laughing.

Teacher Mayra Lagunas, right, works with students Hugo Esparza, center, and Janeth Carhuamaca, left, on math during a GED class at the community hub at John H. Amesse Elementary School.

Migrants are among the more than 4,000 families served

The hubs cost approximately $737,000 each to run, for a total yearly cost of about $4.4 million, according to Esmeralda De La Oliva, the district’s hubs director. When Marrero announced the initiative in 2022, he said the hubs would be partly funded with savings from cuts he made to the district’s central office as part of a reorganization.

In the past two years, the hubs have served more than 4,000 families, De La Oliva said. That includes more than 1,000 parents who are enrolled in adult education classes. In addition to GED and English language classes, some hubs offer classes to help parents pass citizenship tests and classes that teach Spanish to English-speaking parents.

About 350 newly arrived adults are enrolled in the classes and the hubs have served 600 migrant families this year, De La Oliva said. The GED classes are at capacity, and De La Oliva said she’s seeking more funding for the GED and English language classes, mini markets, and food pantries from private donors and nonprofit organizations including the Denver Public Schools Foundation’s newly launched New Arrivals, Students & Family Fund.

The work of serving migrant families, many of whom have harrowing stories, can weigh on the hearts and minds of hub staff, De La Oliva said, which is why the district plans to offer intensive self-care training for staff starting next month. But the work is making a difference.

De La Oliva recalled a family who came into a hub this school year looking for diapers three weeks after arriving from Colombia. Within a month, the mom was enrolled in GED and English language classes. Within two months, the dad was working for the DPS transportation department, which has been notoriously short-staffed.

The hub at Swansea Elementary in north Denver is a 15-minute walk from the Western Motor Inn, which has served as an unofficial shelter for hundreds of migrants. As of a month ago, Swansea had enrolled more than 50 migrant students — and the hub was serving their families and others who heard about it through word of mouth, Manager Sandra Carrillo said.

People would walk through the hub door, sometimes in groups of six or more family members, Carrillo said. “They were like, ‘We just arrived today.’” Hub staff jumped in, providing everything from socks and underwear to help enrolling families’ 4-year-olds in Colorado’s new free preschool program.

Among the new arrivals at the Swansea hub was a 27-year-old man who is blind, Carrillo said. He doesn’t have any documentation from Venezuela that he’s legally blind. That has led to roadblocks in getting services such as RTD’s Access-a-Ride, which provides transportation to riders with disabilities. But the hub is doing its best to clear those roadblocks for its own offerings.

The man’s goal is to eventually study economics and computer science at a university, Carrillo said. He enrolled in the hub’s English classes but all of the materials were on paper. Carrillo said the hubs’ higher-ups were quick to approve the hub working with a local nonprofit to get the man the software he needs to participate in the classes.

“When families let us know they’re going through something, it’s working with everyone in the community to see who has resources,” Carrillo said.

While the work can be complicated, the goal is not.

As Carrillo noted, “Happier families, happier students.”

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s youth shelter system locks out hundreds as migrants seek entry

2024-03-12T19:10:05+00:00

This story was originally published on March 12 by THE CITY.

In the depths of January, without a coat on his back, an 18-year-old orphan from Guinea named Mamdou spent a week riding the subways, before a stranger handed him a $20 bill and led him to the Roosevelt Hotel, the city’s main intake for newly arriving migrants. He got a 30-day shelter stint in a converted office tower in Midtown and a few weeks of relative peace after a perilous journey across the world.

But his anxiety built as his eviction day neared. He’d heard about Covenant House, a special youth shelter for people under the age of 21 overseen by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, and was determined to secure a bed there.

“I went there every day, sometimes two or three times a day. They know me there,” he said in French on a recent afternoon, two days after he’d been ejected from his Midtown shelter after his 30 days ran out, under Mayor Eric Adams’ strict limits on stays for adult migrants in shelters.

Both nights since his eviction he’d slept outside on the sidewalk. “But every day when I go there they tell me there’s no room.”

The migrant crisis is increasingly intertwined with another crisis: an explosion in the number of homeless youth. Data obtained by THE CITY shows a dramatic increase in young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 reported as having been turned away from specialized shelters that serve young people in that age bracket, with 473 youth rebuffed in the second half of 2023 — up from seven in the first six months of the year.

Last year, DYCD funded about 800 youth shelter beds, with most of those available only to those under age 21, the agency reported to the City Council.

Service providers and advocates had warned for months that the city’s migrant response does not address the needs of the many young people arriving in New York on their own. Those advocates now say the official rejection numbers don’t begin to document just how many young people are unable to find a spot in a homeless youth shelter.

“I’ve been doing this work for 20 years,” said Jamie Powlovich, the director of the Coalition for Homeless Youth, a statewide consortium of more than 60 groups. “I have never seen the level of unmet needs and young people being further traumatized and forced to endure homelessness, especially street homelessness, ever.”

The coalition tallied more than 200 young people turned away from youth shelters in a 12-day period last fall, including seven children under the age of 18, after which they stopped keeping count.

“The list was getting too long, and it wasn’t moving,” Powlovich said. “We didn’t want to add people to a list and give them false hope.”

Advocates have been pressuring the city to make some concessions for youth in the adult migrant shelter system, urging that at the very least adopting the more forgiving 60-day shelter stay limits used for families with children under the age of 18.

“We’ve been told for about four months now that that is something that they’re working on,” Powlovich said. “But it hast happened yet.”

A spokesperson for City Hall didn’t respond to a request for comment, but Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly defended the city’s handling of the arrival of migrants from the southern border.

“This is a national problem that has been dropped in the lap of places like New York and Chicago, Massachusetts and others who have similar programs, 30‑ and 60‑day programs,” he said at a press conference this week. “We’ve done our job. New Yorkers have done their job, and we’re going to continue to do our job, but this is a national issue.”

While the city’s “right to shelter” court consent decrees are supposed to guarantee a bed that day to anyone who requests one, no legal requirement exists for teens or young adults to be placed in an age-appropriate shelter.

As a surge of teen and young adult migrants arrived last fall, they were funneled into the same tent shelters, converted warehouses and office buildings as other adult migrants without children. The city’s migrant intake centers don’t distinguish migrants in their late teens or early 20s from other adults, and the city doesn’t keep separate data about that age group.

Through the organizing of mutual aid and community groups, some newly arriving migrants have found their way into the specialized youth shelter system, which allows youth to stay longer and offers more specialized support services. But last fall, that system became overwhelmed and securing a bed within it became next to impossible, as reflected in the new city data.

After their 30 days in shelters run out, migrant youth are directed to the East Village “reticketing site” inside an old Catholic school, where they can get in line for another shelter cot, a wait which takes days or weeks. Those seeking new shelter placements are directed to spend nights in outer-borough waiting rooms where they can rest on the ground, but a city survey found that, like Mamdou, hundreds spent the night on the streets or trains instead.

THE CITY reported last month that the city Office of Emergency Management was working on plans to close the “overflow” locations.

‘A human cost’

The city’s eight youth drop-in centers, run by nonprofits, are the formal gateway into the youth shelter system, providing young homeless New Yorkers with clothing, food and showers, and linking them up with case workers who can help connect them with youth shelter beds if they become available. Those centers, too, have seen a sustained spike in usage over the past several months.

In January, 1,600 youth spent time in city drop in centers, a 28% increase from July according to monthly data reported by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development. Case workers at those drop-in sites served 1,700 people in the first four months of the fiscal year, 300 more than the city had planned to serve in the entire year.

Yet Adams’ preliminary budget released in January proposed slashing $2 million from the $52 million allocated for runaway and homeless youth, eliminating 16 positions that help young people access permanent housing options. The Adams administration is also refusing to implement a recently passed law that would allow people in youth shelters to access CityFHEPS housing vouchers, saying the mandate is too expensive.

Mark Zustovich, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development said funding to shelters themselves remained the same in Adams’ proposed budget.

The department and the nonprofits that run shelters for homeless youth “are providing vital services to all youth who seek support — even as the number of young people accessing drop-ins has increased,” he said.

The surge in homeless youth comes a year after a controversial order by the Adams administration banning people from sleeping in 24-hour drop-in centers.

Youth who can’t find shelter are in jeopardy, advocates warn.

“A young woman had recently been discharged from her shelter because her 30 days was up. She didn’t know anybody in the city, spent a night on the street, and was brutally assaulted. That’s preventable,” said Joe Westmacott, a project assistant at Streetwork, which runs a drop-in center for homeless youth in Harlem, referring to an incident that THE CITY has not independently verified.

“We know from decades of research that street homelessness is expensive…. And there’s also a human cost.”

‘They want to go to school’

Many employees at youth facilities are taking the surge in new arrivals in stride, scaling up programs, deftly finding ways to communicate with hand signals in a plethora of languages, and retooling day-to-day operations like how much food they serve on site.

On a busy day before the latest surge in new arrivals, Safe Horizon’s Streetwork daytime drop-in center on 125th Street served about 50 young people a day who would pop in to use computers, eat a meal, peruse the closet of free clothing, or drop off dirty laundry.

Now the center sees about 100 people a day, almost exclusively newly arriving migrant youth who’ve learned about their services through word of mouth. Last fiscal year, the program enrolled 306 new youths into their programs. Four months into this year, they’ve enrolled 542.

Sebastien Vante, associate vice president at Safe Horizon, said they had to halt all new intakes, unable to accommodate any more people. While they can’t connect their clients to specialized youth shelter beds, there are other ways they can support them, he said.

They’ve taken to sending advocates to the East Village reticketing center with their clients, in order to try to advocate for them to get beds in shelters closer to schools if they’re enrolled. They offer referrals to immigration attorneys, and on a recent afternoon, dozens of migrant youth crammed into a back room of the facility intently listening into a demonstration about the asylum application process held in French and Arabic.

“Right now, this is who this is who’s walking through our doors,” Vante said. “Their needs are no different. They’re looking for shelter. They want long-term housing. They want to go to school. They wanna do all these different things.”

But, Vante went on, with its staff already working at capacity, “we spend a significant amount of time managing the expectations of the young people who come into our space,” Vante said.

This New York City counselor used to teach math. Now she helps migrant students destress at school

2024-03-15T14:00:08+00:00

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As a middle school math teacher, Lisset Condo Dutan’s days often revolved around fractions and equations. But when the pandemic hit, her virtual classroom became a place where students came to confide in her.

“I would only see them through a screen, and they would share with me: I lost my grandma, I just lost my dad, I just lost my mom,” she said. She tried her best to listen, but she knew they needed more. “They didn’t really have the emotional support that they needed.”

Lisset Condo Dutan works with newcomer students at an elementary school in Queens through the nonprofit Counseling in Schools.

Driven by those conversations, Condo Dutan went back to school to get her master’s in counseling — while she was teaching full-time — and became a school counselor.

Last fall, she took a position with the nonprofit Counseling in Schools, which places school counselors in dozens of schools throughout New York City. Condo Dutan now works at P.S. 149 in Queens, not far from where she grew up. She was among a dozen bilingual or bicultural counselors that the nonprofit hired to meet the needs of a growing number of migrant students who’ve enrolled in the city’s schools.

Now, she spends her days popping into classrooms to see if newcomers need any help and meeting with students in small groups or one-on-one.

“Even though they went through a lot, they’re the strongest people that I’ve ever met,” she said. “I admire that.”

Condo Dutan spoke with Chalkbeat about how art therapy, breathing exercises, and sharing details from her visits to Ecuador have helped her connect with her students.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What are some of the mental health or social-emotional needs that your newcomer students have?

A lot of them have undergone some sort of trauma. Especially when they share their journey coming here to New York, either what they saw on their way here or what they saw at the detention centers at the border. It impacts them a lot.

Thankfully, a lot of the teachers pick up on these little emotions. Maybe they walk in sad one day or they look upset, or there’s a change in behavior. They’ll ask: Can you please just check up on the student? And when you check up on them, you realize that there’s a lot of things that are still bothering them.

They’ll share: You know, I had this nightmare, I’m still thinking about this. I remember when we were crossing the river. Or, honestly speaking, they’ve seen people pass away on their way here. Unfortunately, they’ve seen bodies and stuff like that. And these are third graders, second graders, fifth graders.

That’s still there for them. So, sometimes they do have days where they’re a little off. [It’s important] to provide them with that support and that safe space.

When you’re starting to build a relationship and a rapport with a student who has been through a really tough journey, what are some of the things you do to help establish that you’re a safe person and that they’re in a safe place?

I let them speak about their culture. A lot of these students are very proud of where they come from, so I give them that opportunity and that time to teach me about themselves.

Sometimes, we’ll share memories. But usually, we do a lot of art therapy. For most of them, that’s easier. Markers, crayons, glitter, pens, paints — anything that I have in the office.

They’re drawing their favorite dishes, their favorite places, or their favorite people that they left behind, as well as their pets or any traditional celebrations. For example, for Christmas, they shared that certain countries have a whole festival for like a week. They would draw bumper cars and parties, and certain cultural outfits.

What are some of the acculturation struggles that you’re seeing?

Usually, what they share is that it’s just hard overall. In their countries, they would have more freedom. There would be much more fresh air and free space for them to run around. Coming here and being in an apartment, or being stuck in school, it’s different for them.

They’ve slowly been getting accustomed to school life. It’s been a lot of teaching them how to schedule their time, time management, as well as asking them what other resources they need in order to feel comfortable.

What strategies or coping skills have you taught students that they’ve found helpful?

We’ve done a lot of breathing exercises. Sometimes [their exposure to trauma] does get them a little uneasy. They really like [an exercise called] smell the flower, blow out the birthday cake candle.

I usually ask them: If I had a flower in my hand, how would you smell the flower? And they would inhale and breathe in. And when I ask them to blow out a birthday candle, they blow out through their mouth. It teaches them how to not take quick breaths.

I’ve also done a lot of cooked spaghetti, uncooked spaghetti. I have students basically tense up every part of their body. So they’ll become very stiff, like uncooked spaghetti. And then I allow them to become like cooked spaghetti, very noodly, so they let go of everything.

It’s allowing them to take notice of what part of their body is under stress, and teaching them how to express themselves when they feel that stress.

How does being able to speak Spanish allow you to connect with the students in ways that wouldn’t be possible if you didn’t speak their language?

Instead of having to translate what they’re feeling, they’re able to just express themselves exactly how they feel.

If I don’t understand something, I do ask them: Oh, what do you mean by this? It could be because of cultural differences. I take that time to let them teach me about what they’re trying to say, or what they’re trying to get out.

Do you ever share things about yourself with the students to help make a connection with them?

My parents are Ecuadorian, and I do bring that to the table. When I go to Ecuador, I visit my grandpa, I go to the countryside, I go to the city, and I’m able to share that with them. Even if the child is not from Ecuador, they’re more open to opening up to me because they realize: She’s been outside of New York, she understands what’s going on in other countries.

Lisset Condo Dutan often shares stories about visiting her family in Ecuador as a way to connect with the students she works with.

They ask me: Have you tasted salchipapas? Have you tasted a traditional dish called tripa mishqui? I’m open to sharing that information with them, and they’re usually very happy [to talk about it].

Where my grandpa lives, it’s like a farmland. A lot of them came from farmland. So, me being able to say: You know, when I go to Ecuador, I spend a week with my grandpa, and I help him feed the cows and feed the horses. That usually sparks something in them. They look at me like: You did that? I used to do that! Little things like that have really helped me connect with them.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Inside a Colorado bill to provide extra funding to school districts serving migrant students

2024-03-16T00:37:32+00:00

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All Colorado school districts that have enrolled any migrant students since the Oct. 1 school funding cutoff date would get extra money — between $15,000 and $750,000 per district — under a draft bill approved unanimously on Friday by the powerful Joint Budget Committee.

But districts where the new arrivals have caused a net increase in students — meaning the district has more students now than on Oct. 1 — would get the most extra money. Those districts could get as much as an additional $4,500 for every newly arrived student.

The bill allocates $24 million to be distributed by May 31 to districts that have enrolled what it calls “new arrival students,” or students who moved to the United States less than a year ago, are not proficient in English, and are attending a U.S. school for the first time.

The city of Denver alone has served more than 39,000 new arrivals from Venezuela and other South American countries since it began keeping track more than a year ago, including families with children who have enrolled in public schools.

The details of how the $24 million would be doled out are somewhat complicated. First, there is a tiered system of lump sum payments to school districts based on the number of new arrival students they’ve enrolled since the October count. Districts would get:

$15,000 if they’ve enrolled between one and five new arrival students
$30,000 if they’ve enrolled between six and 10 new arrival students
$75,000 if they’ve enrolled between 11 and 30 new arrival students
$125,000 if they’ve enrolled between 31 and 50 new arrival students
$200,000 if they’ve enrolled between 51 and 100 new arrival students
$400,000 if they’ve enrolled between 101 and 200 new arrival students
$550,000 if they’ve enrolled between 201 and 500 new arrival students
$750,000 if they’ve enrolled 500 or more new arrival students

On top of that, districts with a net increase in enrollment would get $4,500 per student. Here’s where it gets complicated: Districts with a net increase would either get $4,500 for each migrant student they’ve enrolled or $4,500 per student based on the net increase, whichever is lesser.

If the $24 million isn’t enough to cover the costs, the bill says state officials can reduce the $4,500 per student to a lower dollar amount. If calculations show there will be leftover money, state officials could increase the $4,500 to a higher dollar amount.

State Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat who sits on the budget committee, said in a text message that she’s happy that the bill could provide relief for districts statewide that are dealing with a “very out of the ordinary influx of new to country students arriving.”

Lawmakers have been working on the bill for over a month, debating various ways to dole out the $24 million. Sirota said the tiered funding proposal acknowledges districts incur fixed costs to educate any and all newly arrived students.

Friday’s vote by the budget committee finalized the language of the bill, but it has yet to be filed for consideration by the full Colorado General Assembly.

“I know my colleagues, our school districts, and our educators are going to be very excited to shepherd this bill across the finish line in the coming weeks,” Sirota said.

The funding is less than what school districts get for each student enrolled on Oct. 1: $10,614 on average. However, budget committee members wanted to earmark the $24 million to provide some relief for districts struggling with the extraordinary influx — money the districts would never get otherwise. (Students who stay enrolled next year will be factored into the school funding formula, and school districts will get money for those students.)

“This sudden influx has strained existing school infrastructure and staffing, led to overcrowded classrooms, stretched resources, and increased complexity to the student learning environment,” the bill says.

The bill also acknowledges that newly arrived students may need extra services, including English language development classes, mental health support, and more. Some may have been out of school for long stretches of time and need help catching up academically.

“New arrival students face unique challenges, including language barriers, cultural adjustments, and various academic backgrounds,” the bill says. “These unique challenges require specialized resources and support services.”

How much funding districts might get under the bill

Denver Public Schools and Aurora Public Schools have enrolled the most migrant students since the October count, according to data obtained through open records requests.

Denver has enrolled an additional 2,340 newcomer students, and Aurora has enrolled an additional 1,366 migrant students. Denver’s numbers were as of March 4, while Aurora’s were as of Feb. 29. The bill uses Feb. 29 as the date to calculate the difference between October count enrollment and how many students districts are serving now.

Accounting for students who left the districts between the October count and those dates, Denver had a net increase of 1,025 students, while Aurora had a net increase of 727 students.

Under the legislation, Denver Public Schools would get a lump sum of $750,000 for the 2,340 newcomers it has enrolled. The district would also get $4.6 million for the 1,025 net increase based on the $4,500 per student formula.

In Aurora’s case, the district would also get $750,000. And the district would get about $3.3 million for its total increase of students since the October count.

Most other districts that have enrolled more than 100 migrant students since the October count had either a much smaller net increase or a net decrease.

For instance, as of Feb. 29, the suburban Cherry Creek School District had enrolled an additional 532 newly arrived students since the October count. But the district has had a net decrease of 41 kindergarten through 12th grade students since Oct. 1.

Greeley-Evans School District 6 had enrolled 488 more migrant students, but only had a net increase of eight K-12 students. Adams 12 Five Star Schools had enrolled 389 additional students, but its school population only grew by 42 students.

And Jeffco Public Schools and Mapleton Public Schools had net decreases, despite enrolling 382 and 140 more new arrivals, respectively.

The student influx creates financial challenges for schools across the state, Brett Johnson, chief financial officer for Aurora Public Schools, said in an interview before the bill text was approved.

“There’s a real and specific impact of these 1,200 kids who have enrolled in our schools in terms of hiring new staff, repurposing classrooms for those schools,” Johnson said. “And those are real costs that are being incurred in real time.”

The challenges remain even in districts that have net decreases in overall enrollment.

A Cherry Creek spokesperson said the district has hired six staff members since January to support the new arrivals. Three of those hires are in newcomer classes and three are cultural liaisons who provide interpretation and other support to families who do not speak English.

Correction: This story has been corrected to update the per pupil figure districts get from the state.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Newly arrived young adults face challenges to NYC school enrollment

2024-03-19T20:24:30+00:00

This article was republished from City Limits, an independent, investigative news source.

The 20-year-old from Mauritania arrived in the city four months ago with the dream of graduating from high school in the United States.

”I want to make my life better. I am still a baby, and I should go to school to have more experience, to have more knowledge,” the youth—who preferred not to be identified by name, citing past experiences with other media—said in fluent English, something he quickly picked up from daily interactions, adding to the multitude of languages he already speaks. “I don’t want to lose my time.”

In only four months, he has moved from one shelter to the other: living first in Manhattan, then Brooklyn, and now the Bronx, after the city instituted a 30-day shelter limit for adult migrants in the city last year, which was extended last week to 60 days for adults under 23 as part of the city’s “right to shelter” settlement.

Over 852 single immigrant youth between the ages of 17 and 20 were in the city’s shelter system as of March 3, according to City Hall. Dozens of them have told shelter staff they want to graduate from high school, but haven’t been enrolled—even though they are entitled to do so under federal law, according to several community-based organizations (CBOs) that are trying to assist them.

Eight local organizations that provide services to immigrants and/or youth described delays and difficulties in enrolling young migrants recently. The organization with the highest number of cases was Safe Horizon’s Streetwork Project, a drop-in center for homeless youth that has been serving an increasing number of asylum seekers since last year, which says it has referred around 60 cases of migrants directly to the New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) since January.

But only six have been enrolled so far, lamented Sebastien Vante, associate vice president of Safe Horizon’s Streetwork Project in Harlem.Other organizations—Afrikana, an East Harlem community center that serves young immigrants; Artists Athletes Activists, which greets asylum seekers upon arrival and connects them with support services; the Coalition for Homeless Youth; The Door, which offers legal aid, counseling, and various support services to youth; and the New York Legal Assistance Group—told City Limits that the youth they serve have faced difficulties in school enrollment.

Some have been told there is no space, some have been put on waitlists and others said they were only given the option of taking the General Educational Development (GED) high school equivalency test, according to these groups.

When asked about these complaints, a New York City Public Schools spokesperson said the education department “does not track enrollment referrals and students are not asked to disclose how they received information about the enrollment process.”

“Enrollment does not work on a referral basis,” added the spokesperson in an email.

The department said it is working to ensure that older students who want to attend classes are afforded academic options including traditional high schools, transfer schools—which serve students who are behind in credits or need alternative forms of education—as well as adult GED programs.

“Since the inception of Project Open Arms, we have made it clear—we cannot do this work alone,” the spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the city’s initiative to offer educational support to new immigrants and asylum seekers.

But stating now that enrollment does not operate on a referral basis, advocates said, has created confusion, departing from how the city has historically enrolled unhoused young people referred by social services organizations.

“Providers have always utilized certain processes through relationships with students in temporary housing liaisons,” countered Jamie Powlovich, executive director for the Coalition for Homeless Youth. “If that process is no longer something NYC Public School supports, they didn’t tell anyone.”

Under the McKinney-Vento Act, a federal law that protects the educational rights of homeless children and youth, these young adults should be enrolled in school immediately, even in the absence of documentation such as proof of residency, immunizations, school records, or other documents normally required.

The New York State Education Law stipulates that those between the ages of 5 and 21 who have not received a high school diploma are “entitled to attend the public schools maintained in the district in which such person resides without the payment of tuition.”

Further, State Education Department guidance notes that, “Districts may not force such individuals to forego a full-time high school program to pursue this alternative option [GED test], or otherwise steer such individuals toward this alternative option.”

“I feel like almost all my clients in that specific situation—17 to 20, trying to get into high school—are almost always pushed towards the GED program,” said Salina Guzman, immigrant youth advocate at The Door. “I think very often, there are many barriers that our clients face when trying to get into high school.”

Since July 2022, about 36,000 students in temporary housing have enrolled in city schools, according to NYCPS, though the agency could not detail how many of them were aged 17-21.

To enroll, the department stated, prospective students must go through a Family Welcome Center, with locations in each of the five boroughs to handle year-round registration and admissions to traditional high schools.

But advocates say many immigrant youth have learned the hard way that they needed an appointment at these sites before showing up.

“[It] doesn’t sound like a huge issue,” said Rita Rodriguez-Engberg, director of the Immigrant Students Rights Project at Advocates for Children of New York. “But if you’re brand new to the country, and you’re already very confused and trying to make a lot of pieces fit together, and make the trip to the Family Welcome Center, and they tell you that you can’t be there, that you have to go back—that might be a reason alone why a family decides to just stop trying.”

A NYCPS spokesperson disputed that appointments are required at Family Welcome Centers, saying they are recommended but that walk-ins are accepted too. Welcome Centers can provide referrals to students interested in transfer schools, but for other pathways to graduation, such as adult education programs, prospective students should visit a referral center instead, the spokesperson said.

However, migrants who do make appointments at these welcome centers are sometimes told there is no space or they have to go on a waiting list, advocates say.

In an email, a NYCPS spokesperson acknowledged the presence of waitlists at some of its Welcome Centers—one in Downtown Brooklyn, for example, had less than 20 students waiting at the time of publication—but said names are taken off those lists daily thanks to rolling admissions, and that prospective students have the option of applying through other enrollment centers if their local spot is full.

But advocates say what should be a relatively smooth process now takes several weeks to a little over a month, and depends on a variety of circumstances: available seats, the type of school (transfer school, international high school, etc.), the needs of the student, and the time of year.

“The biggest problem: there’s no room in GED or high school alternatives,” explained Chia Chia Wang, NY Director of Church World Service (CWS), an organization that works with unaccompanied children who have come to reunite with their family members, which has been assisting many young people who are 17 or older with enrollment.

A CWS case manager explained that it took a month for one migrant, who will turn 18 in April and is living in a youth shelter without a guardian, to be enrolled after visiting the Family Welcome Center and being placed on a waiting list. “Despite reaching out to several transfer schools, he remained on waiting lists,” the caseworker said in an email.

“His absence from an educational environment,” the case manager added, “was starting to impact his mental well-being, as he expressed feeling down while observing his friends attending school while he remained at the shelter.”

To enroll migrants, advocates have made appointments, visited the Family Welcome Center, and called a bunch of high schools directly. “And that’s how, you know, we get students in school,” described Rodriguez-Engberg.

But according to the law, and reiterated by both the U.S. Department of Education and the NYS Department of Education, enrollment should be immediate. A U.S. Department of Education spokesperson said that anyone who meets the eligibility requirements and who is identified as homeless by a local liaison that serves students in temporary housing and their families in schools, should be able to attend classes right away.

A spokesperson for the New York State Education Department (NYSED) said that NYCPS has not reported any difficulties, delays, or problems in enrolling immigrant students in this age group, nor in failing to enroll them promptly, as required by the McKinney-Vento Act. NYSED would provide direct technical assistance to ensure compliance, added the spokesperson.

As a recipient of McKinney-Vento funds, the NYCPS has submitted proposals and annual reports ensuring compliance with the act, NYSED explained.

The New York State Attorney General’s Office encourages people who have been denied enrollment to contact its office or to file a Civil Rights Bureau complaint form.

Aging out of classrooms

An applicant approaching 18 complicates enrollment, several advocates explained. Turning 18 often makes it even harder.

“I had difficulty enrolling a client that was 17 and a half,” a Church World Service caseworker said via email. “The family was told that he was going to be 18 years old soon and that he should go to take a GED program instead of enrolling him in high school.”

The two young men City Limits spoke to during a visit to the Safe Horizons drop-in center in Harlem, one 20 and the other 18, said they had both asked staff at their shelters to be enrolled in school, to no avail. Nor were they referred to a family welcome center.

The young man from Mauritania said he did not persist or revisit the request because, under the city’s previous 30-day stay limit rules for adult migrants, it would be too difficult to fully focus on his studies without a stable place to live.

“So if I finished that one month, I should wait two weeks—three weeks, or one week, whatever—to get a shelter. I cannot sleep in a church, or sleep in a mosque, and then wake in the morning and go to school and come back tired,” he said.

CBOs told City Limits this age group easily falls through the cracks of the city’s shelter system and tends to be perceived as adults, not as young adults or unaccompanied youth.

“For newly arrived migrant youth of that age group—17 to 20—it’s rare that somebody will identify them as a [school-age] student, as a youth who needs to be in school,” Rodriguez-Engberg said. “They’re looked at as like adults, or they’re overlooked, period.”

Many young adults are entering adult shelters, where it’s harder to access the programs designed to help them.

Young people under the age of 24 are eligible for specialized runaway and homeless youth shelters under the Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD), but with only 813 beds, it has long been near or at capacity. In addition to school enrollment assistance, these shelters provide mental health services, access to legal aid, job training, and other services.

After two years of new immigrants arriving from all over the world, organizations say it’s hard to know the magnitude of the problem: how many young people who could be enrolled who are not in school right now, and how their lives could have been changed with such access.

“A bigger problem is the fact that we don’t really even know what the actual need is,” Rodriguez-Engberg said. “How many are there actually, who just gave up and are working or trying to do something else, because they had no idea they could be in school.”

In 2020, the Migration Policy Institute estimated that 3,800 newly arrived immigrants in New York City, ages 16 to 21, were neither enrolled in city schools nor had a diploma.

While NYCPS expanded programs for new immigrants enrolled in the city’s transfer high schools in 2022, the same year that more immigrants began arriving in the city, advocates say it’s still not enough to keep up with demand.

Enrollment challenges have affected both young adults living alone in the city as well as those living with their families. “The problem that exists with the lack of options and the Family Welcome Centers referring students to GED programs, happens regardless of whether the student is here alone or they’re here with their family,” Rodriguez-Engberg explained.

The youngest, those between 17 to 19, advocates explain, have a better chance and more time to navigate the laborious enrollment process, but for older youth, time is limited, since federal law only guarantees their right to attend through age 21.

“Every beginning is hard, but in the end, it’s going to be okay, but we don’t want to lose time,” the young man from Mauritania told a City Limits reporter. “We’re not allowed to work, so we should go to school to get information. If we were allowed to work, that information can help us in the future.”

He cited his own multilingual skills as something he and many other immigrant youth can offer the local job market—if they can access it.

“Maybe, the U.S. is going to need us one day,” he said.

Editor’s note from City Limits: This story has been updated since original publication to include additional information provided by NYCPS.

Chicago Public Schools ‘hitting the gas pedal’ on expanding dual language programs

2024-03-19T21:12:40+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools plans to hit “the gas pedal” on an expansion of dual language programs, which teach students in both English and another language, CEO Pedro Martinez said Tuesday at an event focused on Latino students.

At the event hosted by advocacy organization Latino Policy Forum, Martinez said CPS has a “significant opportunity” to expand its existing slate of dual language programs, which are designed to help students become fluent in English and another language.

The district currently has dual language programs in 37 elementary schools, three high schools, and three charter schools, according to a presentation Martinez delivered Tuesday.

Officials did not immediately share details on how soon the district wants to expand its dual language offerings, what it would cost, or where new programs would open because the district is still planning, according to a spokesperson. Martinez said Tuesday his team also wants to create more world language options.

Dual language programs are one of three types of English learner programs available in CPS; however, dual language can also serve students who are not learning English as a new language.

By state law, schools with 20 or more English language learners who speak the same native language must offer a Transitional Bilingual Program, which provides instruction in English and a child’s native language but focuses on building up the student’s English skills. Schools with 19 or fewer students who speak the same native language have a Transitional Program of Instruction, which provides instruction in English, according to CPS.

Transitional programs work to ensure that non-English speakers can speak English, but “imagine if they could keep their Spanish and go deeper,” he told the crowd at Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy.

“We want biliteracy, not just transitioning out of the native language into English,” said Karime Asaf, chief of the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education.

The district’s goal comes as CPS has welcomed more than 6,000 new migrant students into schools so far this year, Martinez told reporters after the event. Educators and union officials have expressed concern about a lack of staffing and resources at schools to properly support migrant students who have come to Chicago from the southern border since 2022.

CPS has struggled to provide bilingual programming to English language learners. In February, district officials said just under 6% of schools — or roughly 30 — did not have teachers with required bilingual or English-as-a-second-language credentials.

Asaf said this challenge has emerged as migrant families move out of shelters and find permanent homes through housing assistance programs in neighborhoods where the schools do not have bilingual programming or large numbers of English learners, Asaf said. The district is prioritizing helping teachers at those schools get certified to teach English language learners, if they are interested, she said. The district is also sending central staffers to help schools with students who are learning English, she said.

But even before the most recent wave of migrants, CPS bilingual programming lagged. In 2017, the Chicago Reporter found that 71% of 342 schools audited by CPS did not have adequate bilingual programming, in violation of state law.

CPS has gradually opened dual language programs over the past decade, with efforts stretching back to at least 2016 and an expansion in 2018.

Advocates for English learners have previously pushed the district to open more dual language programs. One study focused on fifth graders in Oregon found strong signs that dual language instruction can improve literacy achievement, according to a 2022 review of the research by the federal Institute of Education Sciences’s What Works Clearinghouse. However, that study and another out of Utah found no evidence that dual language instruction boosted math or science achievement, and reviewers called for more rigorous research.

Such programs can also be costly, which could make it challenging for the district to implement as it faces a $391 million deficit next fiscal year.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Amid influx of students new to the country, English development teachers in Colorado feel overwhelmed

2024-03-20T23:44:05+00:00

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This school year has been overwhelming for teachers like Joel Mollman.

As an English language development teacher at Hamilton Middle School in Denver, Mollman has had to take on more work to keep up with the growing number of students who need help learning English.

In previous years, for example, his school might have only received three students a month who needed to be screened for English fluency. This year, he screens at least three new students each week — a process that takes one to two hours per student.

“It could quickly take up two of my mornings where I could be in classrooms,” Mollman said.

Across the state, English language development teachers describe similar scenarios.

As many schools have experienced an influx of new students with limited English skills all year, their roles have been changing.

Traditionally, these teachers are tasked with screening new students, teaching English as a second language, administering English fluency tests, and coaching other classroom teachers.

Now they must also support many students who are new to the country in much larger classes than typical.

As of the end of February, seven of Colorado’s districts — Denver, Aurora, Cherry Creek, Greeley, Adams 12, Jeffco, and Mapleton — told Chalkbeat they had enrolled more than 5,600 students new to the country after October count.

Some schools, in particular ones where there haven’t traditionally been large numbers of English learners, have relied on their English language development teachers to be the main support for children new to the country. Some of the teachers describe helping students and their families navigate a new country, and even taking in a child whose family was living in a car, during a bout of chickenpox.

Often, they say, certain parts of their job have fallen to the wayside, and state advocates say that in small districts, even screening students to identify their English needs, a crucial step, gets skipped.

Cynthia Trinidad-Sheahan, president of the Colorado Association for Bilingual Education, said districts don’t have the manpower, and often don’t know what to do.

“The expertise is lacking with some of the districts,” Trinidad-Sheahan said. “How do we get training to the teachers that are in these rural districts? And it’s not just on the paraeducators and teachers. The administrators leading these buildings do not have a clear understanding of language acquisition.”

Teachers start by testing for English fluency

When a student who is suspected of not being fluent in English is enrolled in school, the district is required to screen them to identify their language level and needs for services. That screening is supposed to happen within two weeks of enrollment.

In a typical year, that occupies time in the beginning of the school year for English language development teachers. This year, with some schools receiving new students every week, that process has taken up a lot more time.

At Hamilton Middle, where Mollman is also team lead for the school’s multilingual team, he’s taken on the role of screening all students this semester. Official state numbers show 40% of Hamilton’s 700 students have been identified as English learners.

In addition to administering the tests, Mollman has to block off a few hours per week to do the paperwork for the district. That requires entering scores and other information into the computer, and three school staff members to sign off.

Last semester, another English language development teacher on his team was sharing the load, but with so many new students, that teacher had to take on another class, giving up one of her free periods. Mollman now does all the screening.

Each Monday, he starts his week preparing for testing, double-checking the schedules given to new students to make sure they’re in the right classes, tracking down Chromebooks if they haven’t received them, and sometimes making calls as he tries to figure out what proficiency the new students have in their native language.

Kayli Brooks, a teacher at Tollgate Elementary in Aurora, said screening new students didn’t consume her job only because her school was able to get help from Aurora district leaders who stepped in to do that work.

But she recalls how many of the students arrived just before the annual testing window for ACCESS tests, the tests English learners take each year to measure their progress in English fluency. Those students had to take both tests within days or weeks.

“Every office or room was filled with testing,” Brooks said. She said it was heartbreaking to pull students and have them realize they had to take yet another English test they wouldn’t be able to do well on.

It’s hard to find time to help more students

Both Brooks and Mollman said that in their schools, giving students a block of English language instruction — a legally required practice — has not stopped.

But other help for students and staff has.

Brooks, for instance, said she used to pull groups of students such as those new to the country out of class for extra English instruction where she would let them practice speaking. She used to cater those sessions to phrases and vocabulary the students might encounter in other content classrooms such as science or social studies so they might feel more able to participate.

“All of that stopped,” Brooks said. “It came to an absolute screeching halt.”

In recent weeks, as the number of new students has slowed, she started back on a rhythm of reconvening some small groups of students.

“They are so happy,” Brooks said. “They want to learn. I taught them last week some basic advocacy: I need water. I need the bathroom. I need food.”

Still, she isn’t doing as much as she would like. And she hasn’t been able to help other classroom teachers in her school. At Tollgate, she said, about 60% to 75% of students are considered level 1 English learners, which means they don’t have any English fluency.

“We have a little over half of every classroom filled with students who don’t speak English, so half of their students are understanding what they say,” Brooks said. “Our team wants to — and should be — supporting teachers and having professional development around this. It’s just been such an overwhelming time that it’s not something that’s happening.”

Trinidad-Sheahan said districts need to allow English language development teachers to coach other teachers so the responsibilities for teaching students gets shared.

At the schools seeing an influx of emerging bilingual students, she said, instructional coaches should be teachers with experience in teaching English learners.

Mollman said at his Denver school, his team is trying to help other content teachers, but “we’re still trying to figure out the best way to do this.”

In other years, at his school teachers may have paired new students with other students who also speak the same language. But with so many new students, including some who speak Spanish and others who speak Arabic, it’s not always possible.

He’s also trying to get teachers to adapt how they grade students who don’t yet speak English. But it’s all a challenge.

“Some teachers are very good at adapting,” Mollman said. “Some have really struggled with it and we haven’t quite found the solution.”

Teachers feel unprepared for student needs

Even teachers who have experience working with students learning English as a new language say they’ve felt unprepared at times this year.

Dakota Prosch, is an English language teacher at Academia Ana Marie Sandoval in Denver, where she teaches fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students at the dual language Montessori school. In a typical year, her students are already close to fully bilingual. Because of the school model, and being a magnet school, most students by fourth grade have been in the school since kindergarten.

But this year, because of the large numbers of migrant students in Denver, the school has had to accept new students. It means Prosch is now working with students who have just arrived in the country and speak no English.

“We don’t have any materials for students who don’t speak English,” she said.

In February, the district provided some materials used at newcomer centers, but Prosch wishes she had gotten those resources sooner. For at least 30 minutes a day, she pulls aside the new students to work with them on some English development.

“There’s essentially two classes in one,” Prosch said. “I cannot deliver the same instruction.”

Most of her students are usually analyzing text. She tries to have her new students do that too, but many are just trying to learn what a sentence is and “how to put their tongue between their teeth” to learn the sounds different letter combinations make.

Still, Prosch said, “they’re really awesome kids and I’m really glad to have them.” It’s a sentiment echoed by other teachers.

Lawmakers are discussing a plan that would give some school districts additional funding for the students new to the country who have enrolled after October count when school funding is set.

Mollman agrees that more resources would help.

Right now, he said, schools like his are making tough decisions, such as choosing between bringing in a second English language development teacher or another science teacher. At his school, this year, they added a new ELD teacher to relieve a class that had more than 40 students.

“It was a pretty easy decision this year, but that then impacted one of our teams more severely than others,” Mollman said.

But, even without funding, teachers say their roles have to adapt to meet the needs of students.

“The goal is to ensure all of our students are successful regardless if they’re language learners or not,” Mollman said.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado will allow some of this year’s new migrant students to skip state tests

2024-03-22T22:39:54+00:00

Some students who are new to the U.S. and enrolled in Colorado schools after the official October count will not have to take any standardized tests this spring.

That’s according to new guidance issued recently by the Colorado Department of Education.

The department changed the guidance as school districts are seeing unprecedented numbers of new students who are new to the country. Teachers have described various challenges they’ve faced trying to educate migrant students, and the students are unlikely to do well on standardized state tests given in English. As of February, the Denver, Aurora, Cherry Creek, Greeley, Adams 12, Jeffco, and Mapleton districts told Chalkbeat they had enrolled more than 5,600 newcomer students after October count.

Denver Public School leaders told their school board this week that in their case, the majority of students new to the country will fall into that category to be exempt from testing.

Colorado students who are identified as new to the country and have no or limited proficiency in English already are exempt from taking standardized English reading and writing tests for at least their first year of school. Before the new guidance, they were expected to take standardized math and science tests with accommodations.

This spring, if students are new to the country, have no or little English fluency, enrolled after October count, and had limited or interrupted schooling before arriving, they can also skip the math and science tests.

Limited or interrupted schooling includes not attending school for six consecutive school calendar months prior to Colorado enrollment or having two or more years of missed schooling compared to similarly aged students in the U.S. Students who had limited school options in their home country because of war, civil unrest, or needing to travel a long distance to an available school could also qualify for that designation.

Students who have not had interrupted schooling will still be expected to take math and science tests with accommodations. Their participation will count toward overall participation rates, but their scores will not be factored into school ratings for state or federal accountability systems.

Colorado tests students in third through 11th grades. CMAS English and math tests are given to students in third through eighth grade. Science tests are only given to students in fifth, eighth, and 11th grades. In high school, students take the PSAT in ninth and tenth grades, and the SAT in 11th grade.

Families can always opt students out of tests.

In Colorado, this year’s spring testing window begins April 8, after most districts come back from spring break.

Reporter Ann Schimke contributed to this report.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

LISTEN: Migrant students navigate a new reality

2024-03-27T10:00:00+00:00

The first episode of P.S. Weekly focuses on one of the biggest education stories in New York City this year: the arrival of thousands of migrant students.

Officials estimate that more than 36,000 migrant students have enrolled in city schools over the past two years.

What challenges are these new students facing? And what are schools doing to support them? This student-reported episode explores these questions through conversations with students, educators, and a journalist who’s been covering the issue.

The first segment features an interview with Chalkbeat reporter Michael Elsen-Rooney, as he explains how schools have been supporting recently arrived students — and what the media has gotten wrong. With the city’s recent policy limiting migrant families to 60 days in shelters, it’s been hard on schools to figure out how to help. Elsen-Rooney said school officials are grappling with questions like: “Can we figure out transportation for them, or do they leave? And then they have to start over at a new school?”

Next, Marisol Martin, a senior at Claremont International High School in the Bronx, talks about her hurdles and triumphs since coming here from Mexico a few years ago. As she’s gotten more involved with her school’s Dream Squad — a program the Education Department started in 2020 to help immigrant students and undocumented youth and is now in more than 60 schools — Martin has felt more a part of the community.

A poster for the Dream Squad at Claremont International High School.

She’s paying it forward, now as a Dream Squad leader herself, and she shares her view on how schools should better help students feel connected to one another.

“What I would tell them is to socialize with other people,” Martin said in Spanish. “When you’re alone, you’re shy, and you don’t want to talk to anyone, you close yourself in your own world, and you don’t know more about what’s happening outside.”

Finally, Sunisa Nuonsy, a former high school teacher of 10 years at International High School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, talks about why she became a teacher specifically focused on immigrant students, the challenges she faced, and her advice to other teachers, especially those who are working with migrant students who may have experienced trauma. (Nuonsy is currently a doctoral student in urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center and a project researcher for the CUNY Initiative on Immigration and Education.)

Sunisa Nuonsy

“They can easily shut down and they can easily drop out,” Nuonsy said of migrant students. “So you have a very unique opportunity to be an adult in their life that is welcoming them and affirming them and showing them that they have value and that they should be here.”

P.S. Weekly is available on major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Be sure to drop a review in your app or shoot an email to PSWeekly@chalkbeat.org. Tell us what you learned today or what you’re still wondering. We just might read your comment on a future episode.

P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between Chalkbeat and The Bell. Listen for new episodes Wednesdays this spring.

Read the full episode transcript below

Dorothy: Welcome to P.S. Weekly… the sound of the New York City school system. I’m Dorothy Ha, a senior at Stuyvesant High School– and I’m super excited to be hosting the very first episode of P.S. Weekly. This show is a collaboration between Chalkbeat New York, a leading education news site– and The Bell, a leading provider of audio journalism training to high school students. It’s a pairing as natural as a bacon, egg, and cheese!

Dorothy: Each week this Spring, our team will dig into one issue affecting New York City schools, bringing you a mix of voices and perspectives that you won’t find anywhere else. Along the way, we want to hear from YOU, our lovely listeners– more on that later in the show. Right now… let’s get to it.

Dorothy: For our first episode, we chose what’s been arguably the biggest story in New York City this year.

News Clip: Parents and educators say several Manhattan public schools are overwhelmed with an influx of migrant students. CBS News’ Natalie Duddridge spoke with the Chancellor on his efforts to find solutions.

Dorothy: What challenges are these new migrant students facing? And what are schools doing to support them? We’ll hear experiences directly from students and teachers. But first! We have Mike Elsen-Rooney with us. Mike is a Chalkbeat reporter who’s been covering how schools are responding to thousands of newly arrived migrant students.

Dorothy: Hi Mike! Thanks for joining us.

Mike: Hey, Dorothy. It’s great to be here.

Dorothy: All right. So, Mike, when did the issue that some have called the “migrant crisis” hit your radar?

Mike: So I remember back in Summer 2022, when this was first hitting the headlines. I was watching a meeting, and a superintendent said, “We’re expecting a couple hundred new students to come in.” And I was like, “Whoa, that seems like a lot of kids.” And then here we are about two years later, and it’s a whole lot more than that.

Dorothy: Right, so now it’s 2024. And how many people are we talking about in total now?

Mike: So our best estimate is that about 36,000 new kids have enrolled over the past couple of years.

Dorothy: Wow. That’s a lot of students. So what can you tell us about where these new migrants are living and where they’re going to school?

Mike: Yeah. So where they’re living really depends on where the city has been able to set up shelters. We’ve seen shelters pop up in Long Island City in Queens, and Clinton Hill in Brooklyn, and lots of different parts of the city. And so where kids go to school really depends on two things. Number one is how close it is to their shelters. The second thing is what schools are really good and well-equipped to serve English language learners.

Dorothy: I can imagine that there are a lot of challenges in handling this big increase in migrant students.

Mike: Yeah, it can be really hard just getting tons and tons of new kids with a lot of challenges. And then the thing that’s been really hard recently is that there’s this new policy: families can only stay in shelters for 60 days. After that, they have to reapply, and they may end up in a shelter in a different part of the city. And so schools have to figure out, “Can we keep this kid? Can we figure out transportation for them, or do they leave? And then they have to start over at a new school?”

Dorothy: Recently, you wrote a really interesting story about how this immigration issue is impacting students and how they’re feeling at this moment. And you spoke to folks at Newcomers High School. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Mike: Yeah. So Newcomers High School is this really interesting place in Long Island City, Queens. It’s been around for 30 years, and they’re really good at accepting newcomer kids from around the world and teaching them English and helping them get acclimated to life in the U.S. And so that school is also near a bunch of shelters in Long Island City. And so when I saw a couple of kids from Newcomers High School speaking at a meeting for the Panel for Educational Policy recently, I was really surprised by what they said.

Meeting Clip: Our name stigmatizes us and condemns us to always be patronized and not having a choice because we are “new.” We are marked with the idea that we are here occupying a space that is not ours.

Mike: They said that the name Newcomers High School was, quote, putting a target on their backs.

Dorothy: And so what happened after the testimony?

Mike: After that testimony, they went through the whole process of getting their name changed, and we just actually found out that they got approved to have a new name. And the school is going to be called Atlas.

Dorothy: The situation with their name change kind of makes me think about the portrayal of migrants in the media. You know, not every journalist is as thorough as you are, Mike. So what’s been the broader media narrative?

Mike: So we’ve seen some examples where the media actually has really not captured what’s happening on the ground. And one really good example is, there was an incident recently where the city had set up basically an emergency tent shelter on Floyd Bennett Field at the Southern tip of Brooklyn. And there was a storm coming, and the city decided to evacuate them.

News Anchor 1: Mounting frustrations this afternoon in Brooklyn after the city temporarily placed asylum seekers into the gym of James Madison High School in Midwood.

News Anchor 2: While the move was to provide shelter for them from last night’s storm, but it was meant– it meant that no classes happened at the school today. And parents are really frustrated by all of it.

Mike: The city had them stay there overnight and then got them out early in the morning. But the school’s principal decided, they weren’t going to be able to get it cleaned up in time; let’s switch to remote learning for the day. When this hit the news. It turned into this huge story, especially in a lot of right-wing media. And the narrative was that New York City kids are getting pushed out by migrant families. But when a colleague of mine actually talked to students and parents there, you know, kids were saying, “Look, we sympathize with these families. We didn’t want them to be exposed to any danger of being out in the storm. And it was just a very different set of reactions than what came through if you only read the kind of media firestorm over this. And so, you know, it kind of drove home this point that what the media says doesn’t always reflect the reality on the ground.

Dorothy: Wow, fascinating. And on top of that, immigration has been a big issue in the presidential election so far. I can think of one presidential candidate who has been speaking about it a lot in particular. So how has that impacted New York City?

Mike: So Donald Trump just weighed in on this. He made some claims in a recent interview that New York City kids were getting pushed out by migrant students. And it just is incorrect. And the biggest reason for that is that there are actually a lot of empty seats in New York City schools. We lost enrollment during the pandemic, and so there’s plenty of space and no one’s getting pushed out.

Dorothy: So my last question for you is, for educators, and policymakers, and community members who want to better support these migrant students, what are some of the success stories that you’ve seen?

Mike: So many schools have been finding really creative and empathetic ways to support their new kids. You know, one big example we’ve seen is that a lot of schools have done coat drives because a lot of these newcomer kids have lived in the Southern Hemisphere their whole lives and have never really been through a New York winter. So it’s just those kinds of things at the community level, listening to what these families need and making it happen.

Dorothy: Mike, thank you so much for sitting down and having this conversation with us.

Mike: Thanks so much, Dorothy.

Dorothy: And now, we’re going to take a closer look at what the experience is really like after students arrive here. And how one program is helping them adjust. Our P.S. Weekly reporter Jose Santana has the story.

Marisol: Hola, mi nombre es Marisol Martin. Soy del grado 12, soy senior, mi país es México.

Jose: This is Marisol Martin, an 18-year-old high school senior.

Marisol: The biggest challenge I have is the language. I only knew how to say “thank you.” The teacher back in my country told us “thank you” in English, but beyond that I didn’t know anything.

Jose: She arrived in New York City from Mexico when NYC schools were still remote because of the pandemic.

Marisol: It was very difficult for me to learn; ninth grade was very difficult. The classes were online, and that made it more difficult for me to learn, and I didn’t understand anything. I just used a translator or something like that to see what to do.

Jose: And she’s not the only one who faces these kinds of hurdles. New York City is a city of immigrants, and its schools reflect that. Young people from all over the world come here for a multitude of reasons. Last school year, nearly one in five city students was learning English as a new language. Here’s Governor Kathy Hochul during a press conference last September.

Kathy (News Clip): We have real challenges. They’re coming in from West Africa, South and Central America. So it’s not just assuming that Spanish is going to cover everybody. It doesn’t come close. City officials…

Jose: When high school students like Marisol first arrive in New York City, the school system typically enrolls them in one of about 20 international high schools. These are schools like Newcomers– now called Atlas –that specialize in supporting recent immigrants. Marisol attends Claremont International High School in the Bronx. Nearly all of its students are low-income and English language learners. When Marisol first got there, language wasn’t the only barrier.

Marisol: Another challenge for me was to use technology that was very complicated for me because they gave me an iPad to work with my things. But it was in English, and I didn’t know where to enter, what to do, or where to paste.

Jose: Being in a new country also takes some cultural adjustment.

Marisol: When I arrived here in the United States, I entered Claremont and I kind of didn’t have much connection with the people. Different countries, different cultures.

Jose: But lucky for Marisol– and so many other immigrant students –there was help.

Marisol: Something that has helped me are some groups, like the Dream Squad. When I entered tenth grade, I was on the Dream Team. That also helped me a lot to communicate.

Jose: What is a Dream Squad? To answer that question, come with me to one of their meetings. It’s 12 p.m. on a Tuesday and I’m here at the Dream Squad’s weekly lunchtime meeting in the school’s library. The Dream Squad’s staff director Evelyn Reyes is leading the meeting with about 10 students, who are all seniors. They were discussing plans and ideas to recruit more Dream Squad members by sending emails out, flyers and directly inviting students to their meetings. Evelyn said the program started in 2019 to help immigrant students and undocumented youth.

Evelyn: Our then social worker was working around creating a space where students, regardless of immigration status, could find, you know, that empowerment where their stories were shared.

Jose: Claremont is one of more than two dozen schools around the city with a Dream Squad program. Dream Squads receive support from the non-profit ImmSchools and the DOE’s Division of Multilingual Learners. They provide notebooks, laptops, lanyards, and events for students and staff. But the most important aspect of the program is the community itself– and the knowledge that gets shared. Meeting topics vary from week to week.

Evelyn: So, mental health, we want to talk about also “know your rights.” So that our students are aware of what their rights are as immigrants. We want our students to also know that they have different options when it comes to post-secondary planning, whether that is college, whether that is trade school, whether that is a certificate program. We do try to do our best to share the information that we share with the students inside those meetings, across the school.

Jose: Dream Squad is tackling some big challenges, and it’s not without its difficulties. Language continues to be an issue.

Evelyn: Claremont is a very multilingual school, so we are a very diverse school community. And sometimes, just being able to produce or communicate a lot of the resources on students’ native language, that could be something that can be a little bit challenging.

Jose: But, despite these challenges, Evelyn makes sure to let the students know that–

Evelyn: Your background, your values, your culture, all of that is an asset. Like you have that, value that. So I do want them to feel like their story matters. Like I want them to, to feel like they’re at a community. That they’re welcome not only inside our school community, but also, you know, in this country.

Jose: And how does Dream Squad measure success?

Evelyn: Knowledge is success for me. Like, as long as we’re about to reach our students and we’re able to provide the resources, that they know how to use the resources, that they know how to access those resources. That’s how we measure success.

Jose: After benefiting from the program, Marisol became a Dream Squad leader– for 2 years now –to help other students like her. I ask Marisol how she’s adjusted since arriving in New York 3 years ago.

Jose (in Spanish): After 3 years of being here, how have you adjusted?

Marisol: I think that through time and things around me, I was able to connect more with the things in the United States. And also how the people that I met helped me too, like… like my classmates who are also migrants. So, we talk to each other and tell each other about this and this. I think that was something that helped me a lot to adapt here.

Jose: I ask her what advice she’d give to other students who have just arrived and gone through a similar experience.

Marisol: What I would tell them is to socialize with other people. That’s very good, because having a connection to more people, you can know more things versus when you’re alone, you’re shy and you don’t talk to anyone. You close yourself in your own world, and you don’t know more about what’s happening outside.

Jose: And what can the schools do to make the experience better?

Marisol: I think that giving them guidance, telling them, like, “here you can learn, here you can communicate.” The schools need to have more– like a connection with students, because many of the children don’t know what to do when they arrive the first day. They are very shy, and I think that they should have more priority with them when they immediately arrive.

Jose: There’s no doubt that the increase in new students to the city creates a difficult situation for both the city and the students. But as Marisol suggests, there are things that can be done to make the immigrant student experience better. And it all starts with a supportive community– grassroots efforts like the Dream Squad program that are making schools a safe and welcoming space for all.

Dorothy: Once again, that was Jose Santana, reporting from Claremont International High School. We’re going to take a short break, but when we return… a teacher’s perspective.

Sunisa: Sometimes, students are hopeless. Which I think to a teacher, to see a hopeless student is sad; it’s heartbreaking.

Dorothy: So stay tuned…

Salma: Hey, listeners! We hope you’re enjoying the first episode of P.S. Weekly. We’ve got an assignment for you—follow us on Instagram @bell.voices. And we want to hear from you! Reach out to P.S. Weekly at psweekly@chalkbeat.org with comments, questions, and suggestions. And… if you want more student-created content, listen up!

Student 1: On Our Minds is a podcast about the teenage experience. Made by teens, for teens.

Student 2: There’s a lot on our minds, and talking about it helps.

Student 1: On Our Minds: Season 4 is produced by PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs, in collaboration with KUOW’s RadioActive Youth Media.

Student 2: Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Dorothy: In the last segment, we heard about the immigrant student experience. When it comes to helping these students overcome language barriers and navigate a new environment, that job often falls to… you guessed it… teachers. Our producer Bernie Carmona spoke to one of them.

Bernie: As a child of immigrants, I’ve thought about the experiences of migrant students navigating through school life. But who takes on the responsibility for making sure students are fully prepared for their future? What do teachers go through while navigating classrooms with migrant students? I remember speaking to my older sister, Mariana, who moved from Mexico to South Carolina in 2002 when she was about 5 years old. She didn’t know English when she arrived and struggled to adjust to the new environment. She didn’t feel supported until she came to New York City, where she experienced the diverse culture and language in schools, things she couldn’t access in South Carolina.

Bernie: Her experience made me wonder: how does all of this look from a teacher’s perspective? I spoke to Sunisa Nuonsy, a former high school teacher of 10 years at International High School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn.

Bernie: Thank you so much for being here, Sunisa.

Sunisa: Thank you so much for having me.

Bernie: Sunisa, why did you choose to become a teacher?

Sunisa: I became a teacher, particularly for immigrant students, because of my own experience. My family came to the U.S. as refugees from Laos. And sadly to say, some of my aunts and uncles, who were adolescents at the time of resettlement here, they were not equitably served in schools, and they dropped out of school. And so I always carried that with me. And when I became an adult, and I was thinking about my career path, I was very much drawn to language and to working with immigrants just because I felt like I could connect with them.

Bernie: Can you tell me a little more about how that experience was like for you?

Sunisa: The first time that I entered the school, I was interviewing as a student teacher, and I saw the students, and the different kinds of clothes they were wearing. Some kids were like, you know, dressed very Western, some kids were wearing more cultured clothes, hearing different languages. I thought it was the coolest place ever because I was like, “Look at these beautiful kids.” They come from everywhere. But we’re in Brooklyn. They’re so fly, they’re so fresh. It’s like where roots are– are like bursting through the ground, you know, because everything is just alive. Like the ways that language comes together, right?

Sunisa: I worked at a school, I would say was mostly Dominican. So every student learned Dominican Spanish, right? Whether you were from Yemen or Guinea, everybody was like, “Que lo que.” And just the way that our students were so open with their cultures and playing with one another’s cultures and really learning with it was just this beautiful hybrid space. And I don’t want to romanticize it, but I just imagine that that’s what our world could really be like is, you know, a place where people feel affirmed in who they are, but also aren’t scared to get to know other people. But we’re trying to make the world better, right? We’re trying to make people freer, more liberated. So I love that space. I love that liminal space.

Bernie: What would you say has been the biggest challenge you face with working with migrant students?

Sunisa: Well, I can say that although I identify as an immigrant myself, it’s such a tough situation to be in, and the larger administration is not aware of that. And they’re expecting you to be this robot that just has to do their job and perform their functions. But a lot of times I’ve seen it impossible to get a student to respond to classwork because they have so many other pressing and urgent issues that are just surrounding their brain and their souls. And that can be challenging to do when you have students who don’t see a pathway to college, they don’t even see a pathway to graduation. So to work with students, try to instill in them some sense of agency and empowerment, you know, even in the smallest ways, I think is really important because sometimes students are hopeless, which I think to a teacher, to see a student hopeless is sad. It’s heartbreaking, right, because you think that you’re there to really guide them to all of these opportunities when those opportunities are inequitably distributed. Like I think about college tuition, right, and financial aid and who can access financial aid and who can’t.

Bernie: What was a difficult moment you encountered?

Sunisa: I had two amazing students who were sisters, and they wanted to go to college. And their dad, culturally, didn’t think that college was for them. And so I had just so many conversations not only with them but with their guardians, with administrators at the schools, with other teachers. And oftentimes, I would just go back to my classroom and cry out of frustration because you could feel like you’re doing all of the hard things that you need to do to support these immigrant students. And there are still things that are just out of your control. So to see these students who had come all this way, had come from this village in Yemen to Brooklyn. And really learn how to believe in themselves and have some empowerment and still not be able to make that one crucial decision about whether they can continue their educations. It’s just, you know, I don’t know, even know how to troubleshoot that.

Bernie: Do you have any advice for teachers that are currently working with migrant students?

Sunisa: My recommendation for all teachers really is to know who your students are. Get to understand their context and their experiences before you label them as anything. Because, especially immigrant students, the ones who have experienced trauma along the way, they can easily shut down and they can easily drop out. So you have a very unique opportunity to be an adult in their life that is welcoming them and affirming them and showing them that they have value and that they should be here.

Bernie: Thank you so much for being a part of this interview, Sunisa.

Sunisa: Thank you so much for having me.

Bernie: I’m Bernie Carmona, reporting for P.S. Weekly.

Dorothy: That’s it for our first episode, but before you go, we have an extra credit assignment for you! Go to chalkbeat.org/newsletters, or click the link in our show notes, to sign up for the Chalkbeat New York morning newsletter. It’s the best way to stay informed on local schools coverage Monday through Friday. And if you really want to impress the teacher, drop a review in your podcast app or shoot an email to psweekly@chalkbeat.org. Tell us what you learned today or what you’re still wondering. We just might read your comment on a future episode.

Dorothy: P.S.: We’re back next Wednesday with an episode on how the national wave of Book Bans is impacting local schools.

Preview Clip: These groups are trying to erode the trust of educators in general by placing doubt in people’s minds about what a teacher is exposing kids to, is really just trying to attack the public school system.

Dorothy: Until then… [with entire cast] class dismissed!

CREDITS

Dorothy: P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between The Bell and Chalkbeat, made possible by generous support from The Pinkerton Foundation, The Summerfield Foundation, FJC, and Hindenburg Systems. This episode was hosted by me, Dorothy Ha. Producers for this episode were Sanaa Stokes, Jose Santana, and Bernie Carmona. With reporting help from Chalkbeat reporters Alex Zimmerman and Mike Elsen-Rooney. Engineering support was provided by Ava Stryker-Robbins. Our marketing lead this week was Santana Roach. Our executive producer for the show is Joann DeLuna. Executive editors are Amy Zimmer and Taylor McGraw.

Additional production and reporting support was provided by Sabrina DuQuesnay, Mira Gordon, and our friends at Chalkbeat. Special thanks to our interns Miriam Galicia and Makenna Turner. Music from Blue Dot Sessions and the jingle you heard at the beginning of this episode was created by the one and only: Erica Huang.

Thanks for tuning in! See you next time!

Correction: The Dream Squad, which started in 2020 is now in 60 schools, up from 25.

Migrant students in Philadelphia aren’t getting the support they need, advocacy group says

2024-03-28T18:46:11+00:00

Leer en español.

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

Zulma Guzman came to Philadelphia from El Salvador in 2019 and is a part of South Philadelphia’s Hispanic community. But she’s had a difficult time getting comfortable as the parent of three students in the city’s public schools.

She said through an interpreter that there’s been a lack of translation services in official school meetings that makes her feel unwelcome. When she and other Spanish-speaking parents have asked for interpreter services, Guzman said, they’ve often been told to “bring our students or children or another community member to interpret for us.”

In addition, she said she struggled to find people at her childrens’ schools to help make her aware of the resources available to her as a member of a newcomer family.

Guzman’s experience isn’t uncommon. In fact, it reflects complaints about significant shortcomings with how the district supports newly arrived migrants, refugees, and those seeking asylum, according to survey results collected by Juntos, an immigrant rights advocacy group, and shared with Chalkbeat.

In the 152 responses from teachers, administrators, and counselors at 56 schools, just 17% said there were sufficient Bilingual Counseling Assistants or bilingual staff members to meet students’ needs in every language they speak. Only 19% said they had received newcomer-specific training that covered more than just interactions with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And only 33% said they believe their schools are equipped to communicate with newcomers and their families.

Philadelphia schools’ inability to provide the kind of support that immigrant students and their families want has been a problem for years, and reflects challenges schools are facing nationwide with recent increases in newcomer and migrant students.

District spokespeople were not available for comment about Juntos’ survey on Thursday, and said they would not be available to respond to Chalkbeat’s requests for comment until next week.

Philadelphia does have two “newcomer” academies at Franklin Learning Center and Frankford High School that are supposed to help these students. Students in grades 9-12 who have arrived to the U.S. within the past year can enroll in these academies. They are supposed to receive “an accelerated course of study” and unique support “so that they are able and expected” to get up to speed with their peers.

But even these academies that are tailored to help newcomers acclimate may not be enough to serve students’ needs. According to data provided by the district, Juntos said in 2023 there were 1,032 newcomer students, but only 70 were enrolled in the two newcomer programs, and that there were 120 spaces remaining. And empty seats may not be the only issue.

Ashley Tellez is a senior at Franklin Learning Center and a junior organizer at Juntos. Her family is from Mexico, but she was born and raised in South Philadelphia and has had a front seat to her school’s newcomer academy. She said in practice, students in these programs are not getting the support they need.

She said newcomer students are kept separate from the general student population, and she’s only had a class with a newcomer student once in her high school career. Tellez said these barriers that keep newcomer students apart starve them of connections with their fellow students and hamper their ability to make friends, join clubs, and fully participate in the Philadelphia student community.

“There’s so many students who come to the schools for these programs who live an hour, 45 minutes away, and aren’t given the right access to education that they are supposed to be getting,” Tellez said.

‘These systems don’t look out for them’

In 2021, the city school board unanimously approved a “welcoming sanctuary schools” resolution promising to provide training to staff on how to respond if ICE officers were to show up on school grounds, and generally how to engage with families and provide and protect newcomer students in their schools.

Guadalupe Mendez, a youth organizer with Juntos, said the group sent out the survey to follow up on that mandatory training teachers were supposed to be getting.

She said the survey results, as well as conversations she and other Juntos members have had with youth and teachers across the city, shows that training is not as robust as was promised. Juntos had spoken with some people who received the training “and they don’t take more than 20 minutes to go over it,” Mendez said.

Mendez grew up in South Philly — like Tellez, her family is from Mexico. Although she’s older than the students she works with at Juntos, not much has changed for Spanish-speaking students in the public school system, despite the “good teachers that had good intentions” who taught her.

Mendez said that, according to district data, for the nearly 23,000 English learner students in Philly schools, there are only 131 bilingual counseling assistants. These assistants provide translation services, help families get connected with resources in the city, and help non-English speaking families build relationships with their school leaders, teachers, and community.

But the relatively small number of these assistants restricts how much they can help families, Mendez said.

The students she’s talked to who’ve come to the district while still learning English “can’t believe that there are no supports. They can’t believe that these systems don’t look out for them.”

Mendez said the district defines students who have “recently arrived” as those who have come to the country within the past year. But that’s often far from enough time to learn a new language, get caught up on classwork, and feel integrated into their schools, she said.

Juntos has told the school district it should expand the newcomer definition to “any students who have recently arrived (within the last three years) to the United States, and may include but are not limited to: asylees, refugees, unaccompanied youth, undocumented youth, migratory students, and other immigrant children and youth.”

The group also wants the district to set up newcomer programs in middle schools and add at least one new high school program in South Philly, where many newcomer students live.

Students act as interpreters for newcomer students

Felipe Mejia-Cuba, a Philadelphia student and volunteer with Juntos, remembers working in a restaurant two years ago with a newcomer student when one day, in the middle of a shift the student insisted that Mejia-Cuba call a hospital to help him navigate the health care system.

Mejia-Cuba said the student, who attended Horace Howard Furness High School, told him his school wasn’t able to help, and that he needed forms and vaccinations to help him stay in school.

That’s a common experience for many bilingual young people, who are tasked with translating meetings and documents for friends and family.

“That was the first red flag that I encountered,” Mejia-Cuba said. “I found out about all the disadvantages and all the neglect that the newcomer students are facing.”

Mejia-Cuba said being a mentor for other kids his age has helped him better understand the resources available to Spanish-speaking Philadelphians and find his place in his community.

“The me that I am now would be able to help that kid in the basement of that restaurant,” Mejia-Cuba said.

He doesn’t want his newborn cousins and relatives in the public school system to have the same struggles that he did: “It’s not just a battle for who is in the schools now, it’s a battle for generations to come.

Tellez, the senior at Franklin Learning Center, said she feels lucky because she’s able to speak out when some of her fellow students may not be able to because they are undocumented or have family members who are undocumented and fear federal immigration authorities.

She and Mejia-Cuba both said though they are graduating, they want the school district to improve for those coming up behind them.

“I really grew up with these ideas of what schools can look like and what power I have as a student to achieve that,” Tellez said. “I learned that I have a voice and I can use my voice to create change.”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

How a Humboldt Park school is helping parents learn English and gain confidence

2024-04-03T17:00:00+00:00

This story was originally published in Block Club Chicago.

All is quiet inside a Humboldt Park elementary school filled with student artwork, class pictures and flags — except for one classroom, where there’s soft chatter in English and Spanish.

It is home to Lowell Elementary School’s first English as a Second Language class, where about 15 parents and relatives of the school community meet Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

The group is a mix of new arrivals from Latin America, mothers, and relatives from other countries who wanted more opportunities to practice English, help their children with homework, and integrate into the neighborhood.

For some, learning English is also their ticket to getting a job and enrolling in college classes to further enrich their lives in Chicago, they said.

“I want to learn English so I can go to school and get a degree and acclimate here,” said Francelys Tineo, who arrived from Venezuela a few months ago and whose daughter attends Lowell. “My husband is trying to get work while I am in class, but we can’t work here yet. But I want to better communicate with people when I can get a job.”

María Taylor shows off her homework as she takes an English as a Second Language class at Lowell Elementary School.

Like many Chicago Public Schools, Lowell, 3320 W. Hirsch St., has seen an influx of migrant children enroll over the past year, growing its already high Latino student population, according to school data. The school has 304 students, 95% of whom are low-income students and 38% of whom are English learners, data shows.

Data on how many new arrivals have settled into Lowell since last year was not available, but the district has welcomed about 5,700 newcomers in collaboration with the city’s family services department, a CPS spokesperson said.

Noelia Llamas, who has lived in Humboldt Park for 18 years and is from Mexico, is on Lowell’s bilingual board and is a member of the school’s parent advisory council. She was one of the mothers who pushed the school to offer the program, she said.

As the Spanish-speaking parent group grew, they kept asking school officials what could be done to have more opportunities to learn English that fit their schedules, she said.

School liaison Maya Bral reached out to Literacy Chicago — a volunteer group that offers free English classes, digital literacy and workforce skills to adults — to see if it could send a teacher to the school.

The school began a partnership with the nonprofit in November, making Lowell one of the first CPS schools to offer the free class after the pandemic, Bral said.

“We need parents to learn and get practice writing and speaking in English so we can get more confidence, help our kids with homework and get more involved with the community,” Llamas said.

The attendance and level of engagement from parents has greatly benefited the school community, Bral said.

“Teachers are reliant on the teachers as much as the teachers are reliant on the parents, so I think (the class) has helped foster that sense of community even more and a sense of agency for the parents,” Bral said.

Wendy Hernandez and Carmelina Martinez work on their classwork.

Many who attend the class told Block Club it has helped them boost their confidence, let go of fears in pronouncing words incorrectly, and create lasting friendships and a greater sense of community.

Progressing from basic skills such as directions and letter pronunciation to more complex skills like reading and writing in English has given parents a valuable opportunity — and it’s free and accessible, parents said.

Carmen Tello, who is from Ecuador and has lived in the neighborhood for eight years, said the class has helped her come out of her shell and strengthen communication with her son.

“I need to communicate with my son and my community and with people from the school who help him, even doctors, so it’s very important to have this skill and train my English,” Tello said. “In all the jobs I have had, everyone speaks Spanish, so there has been no need to learn English, but now I want to. … I am still scared, but I try anyway. Now I have more confidence in speaking and pronouncing words correctly.”

From the other side of the classroom, teacher Marisol Guzman has seen the women blossom and feel more powerful in their language skills, she said.

Marisol Guzman (left) helps a student with a lesson on pronouns.

Through Literacy Chicago, Guzman has taught English literacy classes for three years around the city, and she has seen how the classes can empower attendees.

“There is something really powerful of just saying the words, even if it doesn’t sound right, just moving your tongue,” she said. “It’s a blessing to see them try, and putting themselves out there is powerful and very beneficial to them, as well.”

Guzman teaches all of her classes in English for a full immersion and only switches to Spanish as a last resort, she said.

“I like to challenge them and get them to work together, because I won’t always be here,” Guzman said. “If we have a new student, they may feel lost and need help, but others have been here a long time and can help, which is a good lesson and good to have a mix of learning.”

Llamas, who works with the school’s parent council to organize events at the school and the park, said the class has broadened her horizons. She hopes the class can help more parents looking to get more involved with the community and assimilate.

“I’ve been here 18 years, and it’s never too late to learn,” she said. “I know English, but this has helped with my pronunciation and confidence a lot. I am grateful.”

Welcoming migrant students is more than a generational challenge. It’s a moral obligation.

2024-04-05T16:00:00+00:00

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There’s no denying the challenges that the influx of newcomer students presents. There are testing requirements, transportation needs, and requisite Spanish-language academic and mental health supports, to name a few. As a child of immigrant parents and the leader of Colorado’s largest school district, I am confident that Denver Public Schools is meeting the moment.

Denver has the highest intake of new-to-country students per capita among all large U.S. cities not situated along the southern border. Since July 2023, Denver Public Schools has welcomed more than 3,500 migrant students.

Dr. Alex Marrero

In the past few months, I’ve walked the halls of more than 100 Denver schools and met with many of our new-to-country students, their families, and the educators dedicated to serving them. I’ve seen fear and sadness in these students’ eyes transform into sparkle and joy. I’ve watched thousands of teachers and school employees level up supports and services — hosting winter clothing drives and information sessions about the American school system. In the process, our leaders have grown, and our district has been enriched.

My own upbringing, as the child of a Cuban refugee and a Dominican immigrant, offered profound lessons in how public schools can help newcomer families thrive. Decades on, I’m proud to lead Denver Public Schools’ work to support our new-to-country scholars.

Amid teacher shortages in the area, Denver Public Schools created an International Educator Institute to recruit highly qualified international candidates who can fill critical vacancies, including for multilingual educators. To date, we’ve successfully hired 98% of budgeted teaching positions, with a focus on diverse candidates to meet our students’ varied needs.

The district’s six community hubs have been key to supporting the newcomer families as they build their lives in Denver. Launched in 2022, these hubs offer help with everything from food assistance to medical services to workforce training. While they are costly to maintain, they help ensure our students have what they need to thrive. The district is also committed to providing reliable transportation, nutritious meals, mental health support, and access to technology.

The district’s six community hubs have been key to supporting the newcomer families as they build their lives in Denver.

Recognizing this as a statewide and nationwide challenge, we are grateful for all of the school districts and leaders advocating for state and federal funding support. These efforts underscore the importance of unity and shared responsibility in addressing the educational needs of our newest community members. It is more than a responsibility; it is our moral obligation as educators.

I want to assure Denver’s new-to-country families that despite the circumstances that brought them here, every child who walks through our doors will have access to the highest-quality education. While accommodating an influx of newcomer students has presented challenges in staffing, services, and a budget impact that now totals in the tens of millions of dollars, it has also proved our resolve to uphold our mission of educational equity and inclusivity for all learners.

As long as I am Superintendent, Denver Public Schools will continue to champion this cause and uplift every child. We are committed to honoring the legacy of those who have paved the way for equity and justice, positioning our schools as drivers of opportunity and advancement for all.

Dr. Alex Marrero is the Superintendent of Denver Public Schools.

Think tank with ties to Trump lays out plan to deny free education to undocumented students

2024-04-09T19:33:42+00:00

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An influential conservative think tank has laid out a strategy to challenge a landmark Supreme Court decision that protects the right of undocumented children to attend public school.

The Heritage Foundation, which is spending tens of millions of dollars to craft a policy playbook for a second Trump presidential term, recently released a brief calling on states to require public schools to charge unaccompanied migrant children and children with undocumented parents tuition to enroll.

Such a move “would draw a lawsuit from the Left,” the brief states, “which would likely lead the Supreme Court to reconsider its ill-considered Plyler v. Doe decision” — referring to the 1982 ruling that held it was unconstitutional to deny children a public education based on their immigration status.

Plyler has survived challenges for more than 40 years. But some legal experts and advocates for immigrant children say the newest proposal to undermine it should be taken seriously, given Trump’s extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric, a steady drumbeat of headlines about the “migrant crisis,” and the conservative-led Supreme Court’s recent willingness to overturn established legal precedent.

“The politics right now of illegal immigration and the picture that conservatives, and even some liberals, have painted of stressing the resources of states and localities, I think that that’s a huge factor,” said Brett Geier, a professor at Western Michigan University who wrote a book about K-12 schools and the Supreme Court. “I do think that this court has the chutzpah to say: We’re going to take it on and overturn it.”

But others say the real intent is to rile up voters in an election year, and that Plyler v. Doe isn’t truly at risk.

“Every time there’s an election, all of a sudden immigration becomes a big problem, and [we hear]: ‘We have to do something about these immigrants, and get rid of them, and not pay for their schooling,’” said Patricia Gándara, a research professor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education who’s written extensively about how immigration enforcement affects children and schools. “Then after the election is over, it dies away.”

Charging school tuition in Texas led to Plyler ruling

A growing share of Americans, and Republicans in particular, say immigration policy is a top concern right now. And immigration issues are getting a lot of attention in this year’s presidential race.

Trump has campaigned on a series of hardline, restrictive immigration policies, including the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and the end of refugee resettlement. He’s also falsely claimed that migrant children have displaced other kids in New York City’s public schools.

The focus on immigration comes as the country is seeing a significant increase in migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Federal officials counted nearly 2.5 million people who reached the southern border last year. That was a 43% increase from two years earlier, though not all were admitted. A rising share are families with children.

More than three-quarters of Americans view what’s happening at the border as a major problem or a crisis, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center found. Just under a quarter of U.S. adults said they were concerned that the rise in migrants would be an economic burden on the country.

The Heritage Foundation taps into those concerns with its recent brief, titled “The Consequences of Unchecked Illegal Immigration on America’s Public Schools.” In it, the organization criticizes President Biden’s approach to immigration policy, saying it’s led to “large influxes of non-English-speaking children” enrolling in public schools.

The document cites examples of Texas schools holding lessons in hallways, and a Brooklyn high school that had students learn virtually for a day after the school housed migrant families overnight during a rainstorm.

In response, the Heritage Foundation is calling on states to prohibit schools from housing undocumented immigrants and to require schools to collect student enrollment data by immigration status “so that accurate cost analyses can be done.” States should require school districts to charge undocumented children tuition to attend public school, the brief states.

It was this exact practice nearly half a century ago — in the same state that’s defying the federal government by handling its own immigration enforcement — that led to the Plyler v. Doe ruling.

Texas passed a law in 1975 saying that public schools would not receive state funding for the education of undocumented children and that districts could bar these students from attending public school for free.

Two years later, the Tyler Independent School District started charging undocumented children $1,000 a year to attend school — a sum district officials knew would be unaffordable for the area’s immigrant families, who often worked in Tyler’s famous rose industry, along with meat-packing plants and farms.

Twenty-one years after the Supreme Court's Plyler v. Doe ruling, the Tyler Independent School District in Texas offered a Spanish-English dual language program for kindergartners and first graders.

“I don’t think any family could have paid that,” James Plyler, the district’s superintendent, told an Education Week reporter in 2007. “One thousand dollars back in 1977 was lots and lots of money, and most of those families who came in were working for minimum wage.”

Four families whose children were blocked from attending school sued Plyler and the school district, and eventually won at the Supreme Court. In the 5-4 opinion for the majority, Justice William Brennan wrote that denying undocumented children the ability to learn how to read and write would take an “inestimable toll” on their “social, economic, intellectual, and psychological well-being.” (The dissenting justices agreed it was wrong to deny undocumented kids an education, but argued it wasn’t a constitutional violation.)

Now, the Heritage Foundation says those education costs have grown too high, and states and schools should be able to recoup them. The federal government could help, said Madison Marino, a senior research associate who co-authored the Heritage Foundation brief, or parents or sponsors of undocumented students could pay.

“We really aren’t looking to deprive these kids of their education,” Marino said. “We’re calling for everyone to contribute.”

Most undocumented families today would likely struggle to pay school tuition, as they did in 1977. And federal aid seems unlikely. Congress is bitterly divided over how to fund immigration policy and whether schools need more funding in the wake of the pandemic, and the U.S. Department of Education has historically devoted a tiny fraction of its budget to educating English learners and immigrant students.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about the Heritage Foundation’s proposals to challenge Plyler, but observers widely believe the think tank would play a crucial role in a second Trump administration. Elsewhere, the campaign has said that external groups do not speak for Trump or his campaign, and that policy recommendations are just that.

Migrants bused to cities spur calls for federal help

Who bears the financial responsibility for educating undocumented children has been a heated topic of debate, especially over the last two years.

In May 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he wanted to challenge Plyler v. Doe “because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different” than in 1982. He called on the federal government to cover the educational costs for undocumented students.

Since then, Abbott has bused more than 75,000 migrants to six cities led by Democrats that have certain “sanctuary” policies protecting immigrants.

Newcomer students can bring many assets, from linguistic diversity to knowledge about life elsewhere in the world, educators say, and some schools have successfully adapted to meet newcomers’ needs.

But many schools have struggled to do so. Newcomer students often do not speak English and sometimes have missed months or even years of schooling. Many experienced trauma on their journey to the U.S. or in their home country that can affect their schooling. Schools often lack bilingual teachers and mental health staff to help. And when lots of students arrive in the middle of the year, state funding doesn’t always follow right away, leaving schools to make do with the resources they have.

Many educators and local officials have called on their states and the federal government to provide additional funding to help — with limited success. Extra money for migrant students was left out of the Illinois governor’s budget proposal, and extra funding allotted in Colorado breaks down to less than half of what the state would typically spend per student.

Plyler challenge could hinge on cost questions

Challenging Plyler would be difficult, said Thomas A. Saenz, the president and general counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represented the families in the original Plyler case. The ruling is now tied up with other federal law, as well as privacy protections for K-12 students.

“It’s not like: ‘Oh, let’s just tee up Plyler, and pass a law, and immediately this more conservative Supreme Court will overturn the ‘82 decision,’” he said. “That analysis is way too facile.”

But there are ways Plyler could be vulnerable, said Amanda Warner, a doctoral candidate at George Mason University who analyzed past challenges to the ruling. The current Supreme Court has favored states’ rights and an originalist reading of the constitution. And in 1973, the Supreme Court held that there is no constitutional right to an education.

That is a “glaring hole” that could be exploited, Warner said.

Another avenue to challenge the ruling could center on educational conditions and costs, and whether those have changed enough to warrant denying undocumented children a free public education.

Back in 1982, Texas argued it needed to do that to preserve resources for educating its “lawful residents.” But the Supreme Court rejected that argument. Brennan wrote that undocumented students did not impose “special burdens” on Texas’ education system, and that excluding them from school would be unlikely to improve the overall quality of education.

The Heritage Foundation brief says that unauthorized immigration, particularly among children arriving without their parents, has reached a point where a “reconsideration is warranted.”

The original ruling seems to imply “there is a bar” for a state to show that educating undocumented students is too much of a financial burden, Warner said. But it wouldn’t be enough to simply show the cost of education is higher.

Any money saved by excluding undocumented children from school would have to be weighed against the ripple effects on housing, social services, and the criminal justice system. “Costs can be borne in a lot of ways,” Warner said. “What are the costs of having all these uneducated persons in the United States?”

Whether a serious challenge will emerge remains to be seen. Marino said no state official has reached out about making the Heritage Foundation’s proposal a reality.

After Abbott raised the possibility of challenging Plyler two years ago, a Texas lawmaker introduced a bill that would have denied undocumented students a free public education, unless the federal government paid for it. But unlike in 1975, the proposal didn’t go anywhere.

Nicholas Espíritu, the deputy legal director for the National Immigration Law Center, said if such a proposal couldn’t advance in Texas, that should deter other states from trying.

“It’s our hope that even though there might be some rumblings from the Heritage Foundation and states like Texas,” he said, “that eventually politicians will come to the same conclusion and realize that this is not a position that is ultimately supported.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

More than academics: Aurora’s community schools are an example as interest in the model grows

2024-04-23T23:45:27+00:00

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When Bishnu Rai’s children started school at Aurora’s Crawford Elementary five years ago, she initially felt lost. She wasn’t very social and she struggled to help her children, she says.

But thanks to Crawford’s community school model, she’s been getting more involved, learning English, and now feels confident enough she’s helping come up with a plan for empowering other immigrant parents.

Crawford Elementary is one of six schools in Aurora that are using the community schools model. Five of them are part of the ACTION Zone, a group of schools near Denver’s border that have high levels of poverty and large numbers of language learners. The district grouped the schools years ago as part of a plan to better support the schools with similar needs.

At Crawford, some of the work has gone on for almost 10 years, but evolved as the zone schools committed to a “community schools” model in the past five years. The approach focuses on using community partners to address whole family needs, with the end goal of ensuring that children have fewer social and emotional barriers to learning.

In Colorado, nonprofit organizations and the state education department are increasing their focus on how they support schools that want to use the community schools model. Some of these leaders say they see an untapped potential for improving communities.

At Crawford, 97% of the school’s 540 students qualify for subsidized meals, a measure of poverty, and students come from 40 different countries speaking about 25 different languages.

Through the community schools model, Crawford works with organizations to test students’ eyesight at school, helps parents learn how they can continue lessons at home, and brings families together to share about their various cultures. Rai also has taken advantage of English classes, health classes, and parent leadership classes.

Parents are involved in big school decisions. For instance, parents helped pick this year’s new principal by participating in interviews and hosting a forum where parents could ask questions of the applicants and fill out scorecards.

“If we empower our parents, this helps our kids,” Rai said. “They teach me how to raise my voice, how to speak up.”

At Crawford Elementary, students come from 40 different countries and speak about 25 different languages. The school celebrates its diversity.

Supporting the model takes resources

Colorado Department of Education officials recently visited Crawford and Boston K-8, two of Aurora’s zone schools, as part of the state’s work to better understand how the community schools model is implemented and what resources can be shared with other schools looking to try the same model.

State lawmakers in 2022 added adopting the model to the menu of improvement options for schools on the state’s watchlist for low performance. The state education department had some support for the model spread across various departments but now is creating a team focused just on supporting the community schools model.

“We’re happy to connect schools with resources,” said Dana Scott, director of the office of student supports for the state Department of Education. “We want to be a place where we can really create some good connections for them so schools don’t have to start from scratch.”

The state doesn’t track how many districts are using the model, but nationwide, some experts believe the model has had growing interest, and more so since the start of the pandemic. Even as schools shut down, they served as hubs for various help to families in the community, providing meals, internet, COVID tests, shots, and more.

Katie Wilberding Cross, senior director for youth initiatives and education for Mile High United Way, helps lead a coalition of organizations that want to support community schools. The coalition just started meeting in the fall.

She says the idea behind community schools is that students have needs that can be a barrier to learning, but schools should not be expected to be everything for everybody.

“There are partners that provide these different needs,” Wilberding Cross said. “United Ways are uniquely positioned to convene folks, to bring these various organizations and sectors together.”

She said part of the work is getting more districts to learn about the model. It’s hard to say how much interest is in Colorado.

“What I keep hearing is there’s a lot of percolating interest, but it’s something that hasn’t been fully tapped into,” Wilberding Cross said.

In the metro area, Adams 14 has had national support in trying to start using the model at Central Elementary, one of the district’s lowest-performing schools, which is under a state-ordered improvement plan of its own. The hope is that the model will eventually help improve student achievement.

The Harrison school district of Colorado Springs also uses the model at one of its schools, and Pueblo 60 uses it at two of its schools.

Chicago Mayor visits high school to advocate for more Sustainable Community Schools

Many more schools are likely doing much of the same work community schools focus on, such as starting a food pantry for families, or partnering with community organizations to provide another service for students or families, but they don’t have the community schools label or a plan with the intentionality that the model would provide.

Having a community schools coordinator on staff ensures that the partnerships belong to the schools and not an individual teacher or principal who might leave, that those partnerships are responsive to the needs in the community, and that they are providing something for the families. With those elements in place,the work is more likely to be successful and to continue beyond just a year or two, experts said.

Schools trying to use the community schools approach generally hire a community schools coordinator. At Crawford, Maggie Lautzenheiser-Page, the community schools coordinator, helps plan and run the various programs offered for that school’s needs, which are different than the programs offered at the next school using the model.

Family liaisons at Crawford speak multiple languages and meet with parents regularly.

“Then it’s not burdening or putting more weight on educators,” said Christa Rowland, Western regional deputy director for the Coalition for Community Schools from the Institute for Educational Leadership, a national nonprofit group based in Washington D.C. “Rather it should lift it.”

The community school coordinator is key, leaders agree. The person should have some decision-making authority at the school level to help drive the work, Wilberding Cross said. There should be district buy-in. And the plans need to be designed with the community, evaluating needs and existing assets, experts said.

If schools are following Colorado’s definition of community schools as laid out in Colorado statute, then they have to assess the community’s needs every year.

Hiring that community school coordinator to implement this model does require an investment. Experts say research has shown the investment can pay off with more resources coming to the school, and improved measures of attendance, parent engagement, and eventually, other student outcomes.

Aurora has made some of that investment. The community school coordinators, one at each of the zone schools, are district-funded. The district is working to find permanent funding for some of the other positions, including community health coordinators and family liaisons for special populations that speak different languages.

The model has helped improve family and community engagement and enabled parents such as Rai to feel empowered to help their children’s learning. But, based on state ratings, the schools in the zone haven’t seen much improvement in students’ academic achievement. Aurora Central High School, the district’s longest-struggling school is part of the zone and has continued to have low state ratings.

Leaders celebrate other measures of community school success

Crawford Principal Aubri Dunkin, who is new this year, said most school leaders want their schools to be hubs for the community.

“But this truly is a hub,” Dunkin said, noting that the community school model allows the school to support parents and help them navigate potential barriers so students come to school more regularly and “ready to learn.”

In Aurora, the district's six community schools have two food clinics where families can access free food and other help. A Crawford parent is one of the coordinators who helps set parents up with the help.

At Crawford, 50 parents, including Rai, regularly attend leadership meetings. The zone’s two food clinics, which provide food and connect parents to other resources, host regular events to give out local food. Last school year, they served more than 4,700 individuals in the events. Within the district, leaders say students whose families are engaged are showing better outcomes than those who aren’t.

And across the zone, “definitely more than half of our families are attending and participating in events on a regular basis,” said Elizabeth Lewis, the district’s community schools impact manager.

At Crawford, which recently received a large number of new migrant students, parent leaders want to pass on what they’ve learned to help the new migrant parents be involved for their children, Rai said.

She’s also hoping to raise another issue beyond her school: pedestrian safety. She said families who walk to the school want a new stop sign at one of the busy intersections. Parents years ago successfully lobbied the city to install one outside the school, but now there’s a need for another, she said.

Experts say it’s that kind of drive by parents that really creates sustainability, and a model that is responsive to the evolving needs of the community.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools estimates between 9,000 and 17,000 migrant students are enrolled, depending on who is counted

2024-04-18T00:03:39+00:00

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How many migrant students are enrolled in Chicago Public Schools? The exact number is hard to pin down.

The district says about 8,900 migrant students are currently attending local schools, according to CPS data. But that number climbs to more than 17,000 when using the Illinois State Board of Education’s definition for students eligible for the Immigrant Education Program — students born outside the U.S. who started attending school in this country in the past three years are categorized in this group.

An accurate picture of how many immigrant students are arriving and enrolling in local public schools is becoming more important as schools work to support newcomers from Latin America, as well as other countries around the world. A proposal in the Illinois legislature would provide money to districts faster to help new students.

But the size of the enrollment increase — and the existing resources — depends on which agency is counting students. In response to an information request from Chalkbeat for migrant student enrollment numbers, Chicago Public Schools and the Illinois State Board of Education produced different numbers, based on different definitions and methods of categorizing newly arrived students:

Chicago Public Schools says the district is currently serving 8,900 students who arrived since August 2022, including those who passed through the southern border and were bused to Chicago from Texas. The district uses five criteria to identify this cohort: students who speak languages other than English at home, have been identified as students in temporary living situations, are new to the district arriving after August 2022, were born outside of the country, or are listed on the city’s Department of Family and Support Services shelter roster.
The Illinois State Board of Education, on the other hand, says any student not born in the U.S. or Puerto Rico who has been attending school in this country for less than three years is eligible for the Immigrant Education Program. Chicago estimates roughly 17,000 students fit this definition. Chicago just started to collect this data in November 2023 and school staff are collecting the birth country and enrollment date of students.

Between 2019 and November 2023, Chicago Public Schools officials said, the district stopped gathering information on students’ birth country and the date of first enrollment in the U.S. in response to threats against immigrants and their citizenship status and as part of the implementation of sanctuary provision in the collective bargaining agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union. However, the district resumed the practice after being pushed by the state board of education.

In addition, the numbers continue to fluctuate. Last month, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez told reporters that the district has welcomed more than 6,000 new arrival students into schools this year.

Chicago Public Schools also estimates that its population of English learners – students whose first language is not English and are in need of bilingual programs and support – has increased by 12,000 students, jumping from 76,000 to 88,000 over the last year students as of April 12. English learners may include students born in the U.S.

A Chalkbeat analysis in February found that the number of English language learners in CPS grew since the end of September, with an additional 7,000 English learners enrolled in schools around the district.

Even as state and local school districts have different definitions on how to categorize students who recently immigrated to the United States, lawmakers, advocates, educators, and the Chicago Teachers Union continue to raise concerns that there are not enough bilingual staff and resources available to support students.

State Rep. Fred Crespo, a Democrat representing suburbs northwest of Chicago, has filed a pair of bills — House Bill 2822 and House Bill 3991 — that would allow the Illinois State Board of Education to create a New Arrivals Grant program to distribute funding to school districts who need more support for new arrival students.

When Crespo first filed the bill last year, he asked the general assembly to approve $35 million. Now, he is asking for $188 million because the number of students has increased.

In February, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s proposed budget did not include money for newcomers requested by the Illinois State Board of Education. A spokesperson for Pritzker’s office previously told Chalkbeat that schools can access federal funding through the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and the governor’s proposed $350 million increase for K-12 schools will help.

Local education advocates say families who have migrated from Latin America countries are transient, often moving from community to community as they look for a home to settle in. As students continue to transfer between districts, advocates say the state’s evidence-based funding formula is unable to capture the growing need of schools.

The state distributes resources to districts based on enrollment and adds additional funding based on the number of low-income students, English language learners, and students with disabilities. The state formula looks at enrollment from two points in time during the school year. With families moving between communities, the number may not capture the number of immigrant students a district has served.

Bridget Peach, executive director of Ed-Red — an organization that advocates for suburban school districts — and a supporter of Crespo’s bill, says students migrating from the southern border often leave school districts quickly.

“At the beginning of the year, the enrollment snapshot is taken,” Peach said. “Some of those students are leaving the next week, some are staying until the end of the school year, but they aren’t re-enrolling in the district.”

State lawmakers are debating whether to include Crespo’s New Arrivals Grant program in the budget. They must pass a budget at the end of the legislative session, which is scheduled for the end of May.

In need of more bilingual teachers, Denver looks to recruit and support international candidates

2024-05-06T17:06:32+00:00

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When Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero was invited to a panel by the government of the Dominican Republic last year to showcase the school district’s approach to bilingual education, he said dozens of teachers there asked him how they could work for him.

Marrero said he came back to Denver excited that he may have helped recruit 30 new teachers to fill bilingual teaching vacancies. But despite their enthusiasm, only a handful of those teachers are now working in Denver Public Schools, he said.

Marrero asked the district’s human resources team to look into why. Many teachers said they felt making the switch was a big risk and they didn’t have enough support, Marrero said.

So this school year, Denver Public Schools launched the International Educators Institute to provide not only professional, but also personal support to new international teachers. The institute will help teachers from other countries figure out where to live, understand finances and credit, and provide other social or emotional support. It will also train teachers to help them earn more credentials and to understand how Denver’s school system works.

Denver Public Schools has enrolled thousands of new students who have recently immigrated from South America. Although the International Educators Institute wasn’t created because of that influx of students, it makes the work more important, Marrero said. In addition, the district is under a court order guiding how it teaches students who aren’t yet fluent in English. Meeting that order requires a large number of bilingual teachers, but there are always vacancies.

Marrero said the work of the institute is to help fill teacher vacancies without replacing existing efforts to fill those jobs.

Denver Public Schools serves 88,200 students, 75% of whom are students of color. But among the more than 6,000 teachers, just about a third are teachers of color. If the institute is successful, he envisions a system where students have more teachers of color, and teachers can expand their careers and better their lives.

If they have to go back to their home countries, they can better help more children around the world too, he said.

“That’s what hasn’t existed ever,” Marrero said of the institute. “Just like we say we have to educate the whole student, it’s the same approach. The parallel is that we have to support the whole educator.”

To get the institute started, Marrero said DPS used $500,000 from federal COVID relief money. But the district will also invest at least $1 million from its general fund.

“We would waste way more in guest teachers, substitute coverage throughout the year, so the way I see it, that’s an investment,” Marrero said.

International teachers struggle without support

Maria Moncada Rodriguez, an international teacher from Honduras, has been in Colorado for four years, but is working in Denver schools for the first time this school year.

She said she has loved the support from her colleagues and from the institute and wished she had more of it when she initially arrived in the U.S. to work in a different school district.

Moncada Rodriguez and her husband were teachers in Honduras who ran a Montessori school for more than 20 years. But as violence in the country increased, she sought a way out. Then she won a contest that allowed her the opportunity to come teach in Colorado.

She and her husband were both supposed to get jobs, and her two children would be able to come along. But at the last minute, a new principal took over the Colorado school where she was supposed to teach and rescinded her husband’s job offer.

Maria Moncada Rodriguez, a teacher from Honduras now teaching in Denver Public Schools, in her classroom.

While her family still joined her in Colorado, it took her husband more than a year and a half to get a work permit. And during that time, Moncada Rodriguez said the family struggled financially with just her income.

“We cried almost every day,” she recalled. But she said she and her husband still gave thanks that their children were in a safe home.

But now that she’s working in Denver Public Schools, she’s been able to connect to other international teachers from various countries, through the institute, and also through the teachers union.

Recently, she said she and the other international teachers she’s met decided to start a guide for newly arrived teachers. Ideally, she said it would include information on clothing drives, financial literacy classes, help with buying a home, immigration lawyers, and more.

“We need all types of information,” she said.

It’s the same kind of help the district’s institute wants to provide.

Denver’s goal: 120 new international teachers next year

As the district has rolled out the supports and launched the institute this year, it’s also hired 64 new visa sponsored teachers for the current school year. That’s brought the total of international teachers with work visas in DPS to 234. For next school year, the district’s goal is to hire 120 new international teachers.

The district plans to use some of the institute’s $1.5 million budget on visits to other countries to help recruit and connect with teachers, but also to help staff to spend time finding resources and helping new teachers.

Finding affordable housing for teachers is a particularly important issue, but Marrero said he’s not interested in being a landlord or managing property.

“There is a healthy way to engage, but there’s also a lot to be said when you have a little bit of separation,” Marrero said. Teachers, he said, “don’t want to be under the DPS thumb.”

Still, the district is exploring relationships with developers, landlords, and city officials. This year, for example, the district was able to negotiate a lower price on a long-term lease for some teachers from the Dominican Republic.

“That’s going to be us leveraging our existing relationships and leveraging also our position,” Marrero said. “Even if it’s just a building. Saying: ‘Can we have X amount of units that we have first dibs on?’ That’s what I’m looking to explore.”

Moncada Rodriguez continues to look for resources on her own. One issue she hasn’t figured out is how to help her oldest child, who’s graduating this year, pay for college. Since her children are her dependents and she is on a sponsored visa, they can’t get work permits, and they don’t qualify for any of the financial assistance for higher education she’s learned about so far.

“Of course we aren’t asking for everything to come easy or handed to us,” Moncada Rodriguez said. “We love to work and study. But coming here and knowing our kids can’t go to university because of a lack of resources is overwhelming.”

Still, she wants other teachers considering coming to the United States to know that things can get better if they can persist. And she hopes local leaders can learn to be more supportive too.

At her school, Academia Ana Marie Sandoval, she loves that she gets to use her experience as a Montessori teacher working with students from low-income families, and that she’s valued for her Spanish language skills.

She said her fellow teachers have been helpful and supportive, and her connection to the institute means there’s always someone to answer her questions.

Moncada Rodriguez said she’s taken many Denver Public Schools training courses, including one that’s taught her how to do home visits with families of newly arriving migrant students.

“Now the only thing missing is how to get a masters degree,” she said. “I’m working on that next.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado approved $24 million for migrant students. Here’s how much each school district will get.

2024-05-03T21:44:21+00:00

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A surge of one-time money will reach 85 Colorado school districts — almost half of all districts in the state — this month to help offset costs of an unprecedented number of new students arriving midyear, mainly from South America.

Between October and Feb. 29, Colorado school districts received 8,085 newcomer students spread throughout the state, according to data submitted by the districts to the state.

Colorado lawmakers last month approved the use of $24 million in state funding to help school districts experiencing an influx of new migrant students this year. Colorado funds schools based on enrollment counts from October. Every year there are some students who leave or enroll in schools after October, and the district’s funding doesn’t get adjusted.

But this school year, district leaders, especially in large districts such as Denver and Aurora, said the number of new students they were receiving after October was much larger than in typical years.

To be eligible for the money, districts had to submit their request, along with a record of their enrollment counts, to the Colorado Department of Education. The department used a formula approved by state lawmakers to figure out how much each district will receive. Nine districts that applied were not eligible for any of the money.

Search for your district’s allocation, net enrollment change, and total new arrivals in the following table:

Districts got money in two ways. First, there was a tiered system that gave certain set amounts of money to districts based on how many new arrivals they’ve enrolled between October and Feb. 29. Then, districts could also qualify for additional money, on a per student basis — if those new arrivals resulted in net increases in district enrollment.

Of the 85 districts getting money, 39 qualified for per-student dollars: $4,672.03 for each student, which is less than districts got for students enrolled in October.

In other cases, districts received many new arrivals, but because of overall declining enrollment, their total student count by February was still lower than it was in October.

The Adams 12 school district, for example, enrolled 374 new arrivals, but because of overall enrollment declines, their total enrollment is down 58 students compared to October. That meant Adams 12 qualified for $550,000 from the tiered system, but did not receive any per-student amount in addition to that.

Districts will receive their funding allocations this month, though for most, it will serve to reimburse them for money they’ve already spent on hiring extra staff earlier this year.

School district leaders talked about having to add new classrooms in some schools, requiring more teachers and other support staff.

The Westminster school district is planning to offer some summer programming for newly arrived students. In the Harrison school district in Colorado Springs, a “newcomer committee” is developing a “toolkit for teachers to use.”

“Even though they are just one-time funds, every little bit helps us provide our newcomer students with the support, resources, and instruction they need,” Rachel Laufer, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning for the Harrison district, said in an email about the funding.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

They thought graduation was near. Instead, several immigrant students were pressured to transfer.

2024-05-20T14:33:24+00:00

Genesis Callero thought she was nearing the finish line.

The 18-year-old senior had made quick academic progress since arriving at the Cyberarts Studio Academy in Park Slope, Brooklyn — CASA, for short — from Ecuador last year knowing no English. She had passed four of her five required Regents exams and earned more than enough credits to graduate, according to Genesis and a school staffer familiar with her transcript.

All that remained was the English Language Arts Regents exam, the only Regents test newly arrived immigrants aren’t eligible to take in their home language. Students learning English as a new language often need extra time and support to pass, according to educators. Still, Genesis was optimistic that she would get her diploma this school year and had even taken a professional graduation portrait.

High school graduation photos of Genesis and Karen Callero.

So the teen was blindsided when school officials, including principal Valrie Wauchope, summoned her to a meeting just over two months ago and delivered devastating news.

Neither Genesis nor her sister Karen, 17 and also a senior, would be able to graduate from CASA, Genesis recalled the school officials saying. They told the girls they would need to transfer and recommended New Dawn Charter High School, a transfer school geared toward older students at risk of not graduating.

“They told me no, they can’t help me in this high school,” Genesis said in Spanish, recalling her meeting with CASA officials. “It seemed to me like something unfair.”

The family felt they had no choice but to transfer. Within days, Genesis and Karen left CASA.

The teens were not alone. According to interviews with the families of six immigrant students from CASA — all seniors who had recently failed the ELA Regents exam, according to families and staffers — Wauchope recently told their children they would not graduate if they remained at CASA and counseled them to transfer immediately.

“If he stays, he won’t graduate,” the mom of another 17-year-old senior at CASA told Chalkbeat in Spanish, recalling what the principal told her. The mom asked to remain anonymous because she fears jeopardizing an active immigration case.

Genesis Callero, 18, on Friday, May 17, 2024, in Brooklyn, New York.

All of the families have since taken their children out of CASA, according to interviews and school records obtained by Chalkbeat.

Wauchope, who is in her first year as principal at CASA, didn’t respond to phone calls or an email seeking comment. Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said, “We take allegations of students being pushed out of their school very seriously and investigate all formal complaints when they arise. Every student has the right to remain in their school through graduation and be immersed in a supportive learning environment.” Tull didn’t immediately say whether the department has received complaints about CASA.

Three staffers at the school, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, contend the students would have been able to graduate from CASA with more time. Immigrant students often fail the ELA Regents exam on their first attempt but can pass with extra time and support. Just 27% of city English language learners passed the ELA Regents in 2023, according to state data. Under New York law, students can remain in school through the academic year they start at age 21.

The staffers suspect students were pressured to transfer because if they did not graduate this school year, it would harm the school’s four-year graduation rate — a key performance measure for city principals. CASA’s four-year June graduation rate in 2023 was 75% last year, lower than the 81% citywide average.

Karen Callero, 17, on Friday, May 17, 2024, in Brooklyn, New York.

“They’re our best students. They come to school every single day, pass their other Regents exams,” said one staffer, adding that some students are homeless and haven’t been in the country long. “This is all because they can’t pass their English Regents on time. To push them out … it’s disgraceful.”

The staffers said they worry the situation will continue with future students learning English as a new language.

Annette Renaud, a longtime parent activist and former CASA Parent Association president who remains involved at the school supporting several relatives enrolled there, said she reached out to some of the families of immigrant students after learning about the situation from staff. She’s hoping the students can be reenrolled at CASA.

“I don’t know how many doctors, lawyers, sanitation supervisors, home attendants … we pushed out the door.”

Graduation pressures weigh on administrators

Several school administrators from across New York City told Chalkbeat that high school principals often face intense pressure to improve their four-year graduation rates. That pressure can be particularly acute for schools like CASA that have absorbed large numbers of newly arrived immigrant students amid the influx of roughly 36,000 migrant students over the past two school years.

CASA’s population of English Language Learners surged from below 40 in 2018 to nearly 100 out of its 300 students last year, according to city data. English Language Learners often take longer to graduate and finish high school at lower rates than their peers.

For English Language Learners who began high school in 2017, roughly 56% graduated in four years, jumping to 67% in six years.

That’s compared to 80% of all students in the 2017 cohort who graduated within four years and 87% within six years.

In recent years, “schools that have never really seen a high population of immigrant students were suddenly seeing these populations, and there were some growing pains there,” said Liza Schwartzwald, Director of Economic Justice and Family Empowerment at the New York Immigration Coalition, an advocacy organization.

But she stressed that “it is still incumbent on the school” to seek out some of the many resources available to better support newcomer students.

The allegations at CASA represent an “egregious example of the wrong way to go about doing this work,” she said.

The facade of John Jay High School campus in Park Slope, the building that houses Cyberarts Studio Academy.

Schools have alternatives to help immigrant students

To be sure, some older teenagers still learning English may benefit from a school more specifically tailored toward serving older newcomer students, particularly if they are in danger of aging out of the system and severely behind on credits, educators and advocates said.

But that wasn’t the situation for students counseled to transfer out of CASA, all of whom were 19 or younger, had passed at least some of their other Regents exams, and had accumulated all or close to all the credits they needed to graduate, according to staff and families.

Educators said that the school, which has hired several English as a new language teachers in recent years, was more than capable of shepherding the students to passing the ELA exam. They just needed a little more time.

“We would be able to get them to that passing rate within that time 100%,” said one CASA staffer. “No doubt in my mind.”

Schools have other avenues for supporting immigrant students struggling with the ELA Regents that don’t involve forcing them to transfer, said Rita Rodriguez-Engberg, the Immigrant Students Rights Project Director at Advocates for Children, a nonprofit that works on behalf of vulnerable kids.

They can refer students to extra night classes at Young Adult Borough Centers without un-enrolling them, and there is an appeals process specifically for the ELA Regents test for English Language Learners who fail the exam but score close enough to the cutoff.

“There are several options,” Rodriguez-Engberg said. “You don’t just ask a student to leave.”

Families struggle with fallout of being pushed out

The immigrant students who left CASA had different backgrounds and academic profiles, but all of them were making progress at the school and none wanted to abruptly leave in the spring of their senior year, according to interviews with the students and their families and records reviewed by Chalkbeat.

Sisters Genesis Callero, 18, and Karen Callero, 17, talk to each other while at a park near where they stay on Friday, May 17, 2024, in Brooklyn, New York.

One student, a 17-year-old recent arrival from Venezuela, quickly won admiration from staff and students since enrolling last fall for his gregarious demeanor and inspiring story, according to his family and staffers. The boy’s mom asked not to use his name because the family has an open immigration case.

On his most recent report card, issued around the time he left the school in March, he earned an 85% average and comments from teachers praising his “excellent progress,” “consistent participat[ion]” and “initiative,” according to a copy reviewed by Chalkbeat.

The teen recounted his grueling immigration journey in a student-produced film that played on TVs in the school’s main office and hallways, according to a video reviewed by Chalkbeat.

The family was devastated by the news he couldn’t remain at the school.

The boy’s mom said she asked Wauchope about alternatives that would allow her son to remain at CASA, like enrolling him in night classes for English or taking longer to graduate. Wauchope didn’t budge, and the mom agreed to withdraw her son.

“I felt it was something bad they did to him,” she said. But in the moment, she felt powerless. “Sometimes out of fear, we’re migrants, we don’t say no, we do what they say.”

That didn’t stop the woman from continuing to advocate for her son. She went back for a second meeting with Wauchope, telling the principal she thought the decision was unfair, she said.

She also visited an enrollment center and asked them to reenroll her son at CASA. She was told the school was now full and could not accept any more students, the mom said.

The boy was crushed but told his mom, “If it’s to graduate, it’s okay.”

He has since enrolled at New Dawn, but frequently drops by CASA to say hi to classmates and teachers.

“It hurt me very much because I see him now, he doesn’t want to go to class,” his mom said. “It destabilized him totally. It flipped his world upside down.”

The news landed just as hard for Carolina, a 19-year-old senior from Guatemala. Since arriving at CASA three years ago, she had made significant academic, social, and linguistic strides.

The teen, who asked to use only her middle name for fear of immigration consequences, struggled at first to acclimate to her new school and country.

“But after some time passed, I adapted. I understand and speak English,” she said.

Carolina’s attendance had faltered this year, and she still needed to pass two Regents exams, according to transcript information shared with Chalkbeat. But she was hopeful she would soon graduate and planned to apply to college or join the Army.

When Wauchope told Carolina she wouldn’t be able to graduate from CASA and counseled her to transfer in late February, the teen was crestfallen over the idea of leaving her home of three years.

“I couldn’t adapt to a new school or new people,” she recalled pleading in the meeting.

She and her mother begged for the chance to stay at the school, promising to redouble the teen’s efforts to pass the exam. But Wauchope held firm, according to the family. (One CASA staffer noted the teen is technically still on CASA’s roster, likely because she was never officially unenrolled. But Carolina’s mother said she wasn’t aware of that.)

Despite her misgivings, Carolina eventually decided to give New Dawn a try.

She set out for the school, which is a farther commute than she’s used to, on a Friday morning last month, and arrived after classes had begun, according to the teen and her mom. While Sara Asmussen, New Dawn’s founder and executive director, said the school “accepts students year-round with no intake requirements at all,” Carolina said staff at the school asked her, in English, to come back on Monday.

Carolina never went back. She hasn’t returned to that school, or any other, since.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.