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Schools say students suffer when migrants rounded up
Children are left stranded, urban educators are told
By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Oct. 24, 2008, 11:02PMShare

The increasing number of raids on undocumented immigrants is putting a hardship on public schools, who are left to care for students stranded on campus after parents are taken into custody, leaders of some of the nation's largest school systems said Friday.

Administrators said some parents are now being asked to provide 10 emergency contacts to pick up a child in case a raid displaces families. Others are making sure updated records show where parents are employed, so they can quickly identify which families might be affected by a sting.

Raids are straining school systems' already limited resources and putting at-risk children in greater danger of dropping out of school, experts said.

"Many of the costs are falling on children," Rosa Maria Casteneda, a research associate with the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Institute, told a sparsely attended panel at the Council of the Great City Schools' conference in downtown Houston Friday. "These children are not expendable."

Urban superintendents admitted they have a tough time with the politically charged issue.

"The answer's not that simple. If you just bring up the topic, automatic division occurs," Dallas Superintendent Michael Hinojosa said. "You need to know what you're doing when you go into this."

Ultimately, though, school officials follow the U.S. Supreme Court's 1982 ruling in Plyler v. Doe that says every child is entitled to attend public school, regardless of their immigration status. About 5 million children have at least one undocumented parent, but about two-thirds of those youngsters are American citizens, Casteneda said.

Parents must be reassured that schools are safe places to send their children, said San Francisco Superintendent Carlos Garcia, who added that he would go to jail before letting ICE officials raid one of his campuses. Garcia, himself a legal immigrant, said he remembers being terrified of immigration officials when he was growing up in Southern California.

"We were so conditioned just to run," he said. "Kids didn't make the decision to be here. They're children. They deserve an education."

District leaders said they've been assured by immigration officials that campuses won't be raided. Still, enforcement activities at businesses and neighborhoods have major impact on schools, they said.

About 420 individuals were picked up in raids in Los Angeles last month, school board member Yolie Flores Aguilar said. About 25 percent of the children in affected families ended up in foster care, she said.

"These raids are happening right now in our neighborhoods," she said, adding that social workers, psychologists and teachers must be available to help children cope with a parent's sudden absence.

Officials from Dallas and Houston said a major raid hasn't affected their campuses yet, but they know the possibility always exists. District leaders said they need to improve efforts to coordinate services in case of that type of event.

HISD spokesman Norm Uhl said HISD will consider some of the ideas from Friday's panel, including increasing the number of emergency contacts for students.

"We think that's a great idea," he said.

Houston has been the site of several raids in the last two years, including one this summer at the Action Rags USA plant.

Of the 166 workers detained, 66 were released that day for humanitarian reasons, including pregnancy and child care issues. They were asked to report to an immigration judge.

School attendance decreases significantly when rumors of a raid surface, Uhl said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 77351.html