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Plan bans schools' immigration question
State board expected to adopt rule today
March 22, 2007

It's a no-no for public schools to deny enrollment based on a student's immigration status, or to ask if they're here illegally, state officials say, but apparently some schools didn't get the memo.

Each year, advocates and the state Board of Education field dozens of complaints from aggrieved parents. Most famously, in 2006, the Elmwood Park school district nearly lost state funding after it barred enrollment by students visiting the United States on tourist visas. The school district ultimately backed down.

A 'chilling effect'
Today, the state board is expected to take up a rule that could settle this issue once and for all.

"Schools shouldn't be asking for anything that would have a 'chilling effect' on enrollment of immigrant pupils, anything that would create a strong possibility they won't enroll out of fear," said Darren Reisberg, general counsel for the state board.

The proposed rule forbids schools from asking about a student's immigration status.

And when verifying a student's address, schools can't ask for information an undocumented immigrant might not have, such as a Social Security number.

The board will vote to add this language to an existing rule that says illegal immigrants can't be turned away, which echoes a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Reisberg said.

Some districts, such as Elmwood Park, have deliberately barred certain immigrants. District lawyers maintained that federal law forbids students with tourist visas from attending school.

They said they gave up their fight so the district could get its state money.

The district isn't convinced the state's proposed new rule resolves a conflict between state and federal law.

"If that's what we have to follow, we'll follow it, but it doesn't sound like it's coinciding with federal law," said Elmwood Park Supt. Douglas Rudig, who started the job after the district's immigration flap.

'Knock off the bias'
Other districts unintentionally bar immigrants by failing to update old forms that require Social Security numbers.

"School districts say they didn't realize and then change their forms, but then a new principal comes, and it keeps cropping up all the time," said Ricardo Meza of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

A long list of immigrant advocacy groups supported the change.

"When there is such an anti-immigrant climate, such as the one we're living in now, these things happen, and it's unfortunate the ones who are paying are the most vulnerable ones," said Maria Pesqueira of Latin Women in Action.


Opposing comments
Comments by 24 people opposed to the change were published by the state board.
"Taxpayers are having a hard enough time paying for the children of citizens," one person wrote. "Having to build schools for the estimated hundreds of thousands of illegals will break us! . . . Knock off the bias and pandering to ethnic groups."

kgrossman@suntimes.com