Some migrant students celebrate first — and last — days of school only weeks apart as CPS scrambles to enroll them
Dressed in a red graduation gown and collared shirt, Adrian Davila grinned widely as his mom planted a kiss on his cheek at John A. Walsh Elementary School at Benito Juarez Community Academy on Friday as the family celebrated his graduation from eighth grade.
The Venezuelan migrant had been in the school for a month.
“We are so proud. We are so thankful,” said Davila’s mother, Marisela Adames. The family is staying in a makeshift shelter in the area after spending days in a police station.
Davila is one of the countless migrant students who enrolled at Chicago Public Schools just weeks and days ahead of the end of the school year Wednesday. With the clock ticking, CPS had made a concentrated effort to enroll as many children of asylum-seekers as it could, even as the migrants face uncertain futures in Chicago.
Officials say that despite their temporary living situations in respite centers, shelters and police stations, enrolling the children in school provides immediate access to education, as well as summer programs in academics and sports. Higher enrollment in the neighborhood school could also ensure more funding and resources for neighborhood schools, said Ald. Michael Rodriguez, 22nd.
While CPS could not provide a total number of asylum-seeker children enrolled in its schools, the team is working to get the data, said Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for CPS.
“We are well-equipped and committed to serving every new student, including those students who have arrived in recent months with their families from Central and South America, Asia and Europe,” the school district said in a statement.
While the financial impact of the new students remains to be seen, the FY2023 budget had provided $3 million in new funding for more bilingual teachers and dual-language program coordinators, as well as the formation of bilingual advisory councils. As of February, CPS reported to have more licensed teachers “than any time before,” with 20,850. Of those, 2,255 are bilingual educators.
And the institution has been working with the city, Park District and school-level leaders “to best accommodate new arrivals and ensure programming that supports our students continues uninterrupted.”
Though the Chicago Teachers Union did not return emails for comment regarding CPS’ resources for the migrant children, the union in February denounced CPS for the lack of bilingual staff and resources for the new students, including mental health accessibility.
But in its recent statement, CPS said it is looking to recruit more bilingual staff to be able to respond to the increase in enrollment of bilingual students and to make resources in Spanish available for students.
This access to a quality education is especially crucial when migrant children are in a state of transition, said Yasmine Sherif, executive director of Education Cannot Wait, the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises. She emphasized that education is a key driver in building economic resilience and social cohesion.
“Without the safety, protection and hope that quality education provides, innocent refugee children face incredible and unimaginable risks,” she said. “Governments must do all they can to ensure that children survive and develop to their full potential.”
The asylum-seeking students living in temporary shelters are enlisted as Students in Temporary Living Situations (STLS) to qualify for all the benefits and resources available under STLS. The student can be “immediately enrolled in school, even if he or she lacks health, immunization or school records, proof of guardianship, proof of residency, or any other documentation normally required for school enrollment.”
In the Little Village area, nearly 60 migrant children staying temporarily at Piotrowski Park’s respite center joined Zapata Academy and other grammar schools and Little Village Lawndale High School just days after the shelter’s opening.
Rodriguez said that it is unclear when the families will be moved into a city-run shelter, but in the meantime, “the children should be in school, even if it’s a short period of time.”
Once in the CPS system, even when they’re moved, it’ll be easier for the families to transfer the children and access more programming, he said.
Rodriguez said that Antonio Acevedo, chief of CPS’ Network 7, asked him to work together to make sure that CPS staff could access the families in the center to offer them to enroll them in nearby schools.
“There is a social and emotional opportunity that school provides. The fact is I want these families to stay in my community. I want them to live here, I want them to make a choice to go to the schools that they’re in now,” said Rodriguez.
The alderman said that the migrant children enrolling in the neighborhood schools could offset the recent enrollment declinel over the past years and the loss of population in the area the past 10 years.
“I want to welcome these migrants,” he said. Increased enrollment could mean more resources for each of the schools.
Rodriguez said that his team is working with Catholic Charities and other organizations in area, such as New Life Community, to support any effort or programming that can help the families at the center find a more permanent space to live in the area.
At Rogers Elementary School on the North Side, about two dozen children were enrolled at the West Ridge school, sources told the Tribune.
Victoria Rosario, who has been a teacher at Rogers for 16 years, recently led and organized a meeting for migrant families, where her husband, Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle, translated in Spanish. The couple lives in the neighborhood.
Ginsberg-Jaeckle, part of the organizing committee of the 50th Ward United Working Families, gave out his WhatsApp number and promised to put together a group to coordinate more events in the future, including a meeting for community members to meet the new migrant enrollees.
“Infrastructure of public services is so important,” Ginsberg-Jaeckle told the Tribune. “Several hot meals a day for the kids that are going there, the opportunity for summer school and the transportation benefit of having Ventra passes. … That will hopefully make a difference for this group.”
Many of the migrant parents say they have found resilience through their children and they agree that even as the school year ends, enrolling the children in school is imperative to ensure the children can begin learning English and have access to other summer academic programs.
The first time Wiliagmy Benitez, walked her three children to Manuel Perez Public School in the Pilsen neighborhood just about a month ago, she was emotional, the mother recalled while sitting with her three children in the makeshift shelter that Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, helped establish.
That single moment made their monthlong journey from Venezuela worth it, she said.
“It makes me happy that the teachers treat them well,” Benitez said.
Most children at the Pilsen shelter have enrolled in the neighborhood schools, including Joseph Jungman Public School, John A. Walsh Public School and Benito Juarez high school.
Benitez said that although it can help the children assimilate and cope with the traumatic journey they have and continue to endure, she worries about potential bullying and other emotional impact that her children could experience.
Her 10 year-old daughter has expressed feeling frustrated most days after school, she said.
“I tell her that this won’t be our situation forever,” the mother said. “I hope the other children are nice to her.”
And though Victor Rangel is grateful that his 7-year-old Austin started school at Josefa Ortiz De Dominguez Elementary School, It worries him that they won’t be transferred out of the respite center soon.
“Gracias a dios ya entró a clase,” Rangel said. “We’re thankful to God that he has started school.”
At the graduation Friday Jonathan Robledo, also walked the stage with Davila. The two smiled as their parents, still in disbelief, hugged their children.
Adames, who has two other children, said that education is important to her and that is why she made sure to enroll her children in school even though the family has no permanent home.
“Por ellos estamos aquí,” Adames said. They left their country for a better future for their children.
