About 40 migrant children could enroll in D.C. public schools, the city schools chief said Wednesday after an announcement from the mayor that school-aged children who arrive on buses from the southern border can attend classes in the fall.
“We will ensure that students have access to the services needed, and if they reside in a particular area, we will ensure that they have access to their neighborhood school,” Schools Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee said in a news conference. Public school districts cannot bar students from enrolling based on citizenship or immigration status.
He added DCPS has a “strong welcoming center” that will support migrant families who decide to enroll in the school system. The district enrolls more than 49,000 students, about 15 percent of whom are English learners, according to data from the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education.
More than 7,000 migrants from countries including Venezuela and Nicaragua have arrived in the nation’s capital since April, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) began sending them by bus voluntarily as a way to criticize the Biden administration’s border enforcement policies. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) began a similar initiative in May.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said the buses, which arrive in the city unannounced, “are a politically motivated stunt.” Migrants, in many cases, have fled death threats or other dangers in their home countries and are in the United States seeking asylum.
Local aid groups have stepped in to receive the new migrants and have placed many of them in temporary shelters and hotels. This month, D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine, who is elected independently from the mayor and controls his office’s spending, announced a $150,000 grant program for nonprofits that are helping migrants.
But many of these groups are strained. With some migrants sleeping outside Union Station and in parking lots, Bowser has called the situation a humanitarian crisis.
This week, the Defense Department for the second time denied her request for help from the National Guard to receive the influx of migrants. “We struggle with a broken immigration system in our country, and we know that cities alone cannot fix it,” she wrote on Twitter.
Mariel Vallano, a D.C. middle school English-language teacher who is helping the migrant families through a mutual aid network, said the children are not yet formally enrolled. The enrollment papers have been passed out to families, but none of them have been completed, she added.
Staff with the Language Acquisition Division for the school system plan to help the families fill out the paperwork on Thursday and will start collecting the forms at that time.
Madhvi Bahl, an organizer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network and Sanctuary DMV, said it has been a struggle up to this point to get students enrolled in school. Migrants living in hotels have not been receiving the same services from the D.C. Department of Human Services as other unhoused people in the city, Bahl added.
“It doesn’t give them case managers. It doesn’t give them any of the other things that you would need to help get them enrolled,” Bahl said. Moving forward, she added, the school district will need to help kids adjust to life in the classroom. “One of the most important things is, of course, making sure they have access to language services.”
Ferebee said he is confident the school system has the resources to help new migrant children settle into classrooms, including Spanish-speaking teachers and staff that can assist families with needs such as housing.
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