Voices Against Privatizing Public Education
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What if ICE Agents Show Up? Schools Prepare Teachers and Parents.
Across the country, educators described widespread anxiety about President-elect Donald J. Trump’s promises to deport immigrants and what it could mean for their students.
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/us/immigration-deportations-ice-schools.html
Adam Clark wears a suit as he stands in front of a one-story school building. He looks to the side and crosses his hands in front of him.
“We have parents who are afraid,” said Adam Clark, superintendent of the Mount Diablo Unified School District, northeast of San Francisco. “We are trying to inform them of what their rights are.”Credit…Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times
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By Dana Goldstein
Jan. 7, 2025
If immigration agents arrive on the doorstep of a New York City public school, principals have been told what to do. Ask the officers to wait outside, and call a school district lawyer.
The school system has enrolled about 40,000 recent immigrant students since 2022. Now, as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to take office with promises to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, the district has shared with school staff a protocol to try to shield students who have a tenuous legal status.
In a December letter to principals, Emma Vadehra, the district’s chief operating officer, wrote, “We hope using this protocol will never be necessary.”
Still, New York and some other school districts across the country are readying educators and immigrant families for a potential wave of deportations.
Public schools serving clusters of migrant children have already dealt with a dizzying set of challenges in recent years, as an influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants crossed the southern border. Some are educating students who speak Indigenous languages and may have never before been enrolled in formal education. Others are trying to prod teenagers to class, when they may face intense pressure to earn money. And many have assisted newly arrived families with finding shelter, food and winter clothes.
Now, these schools are facing an additional challenge: convincing parents to send their children to class when some are so anxious about deportation that they are reluctant to separate from their children for even part of the day.
“We have parents who are afraid,” said Adam Clark, superintendent of the Mount Diablo Unified School District, northeast of San Francisco. “We are trying to inform them of what their rights are.”
About 20 percent of students in the Mount Diablo district are still learning English, meaning they are most likely recent immigrants, according to Dr. Clark. After Election Day, attendance fell, he said, though he emphasized that it was not clear exactly why students were missing.
Adults, along with some children, are lined up in a narrow hallway.
People line up for an orientation session in May for recent immigrants in Denver.Credit…David Zalubowski/Associated Press
Later this month, the district will host a legal information session for parents. Its social workers have explained to families that under current law, undocumented immigrant children have the right to a public education, and federal immigration agents generally cannot arrest students or family members at schools. They have also noted that American public schools do not typically track the immigration status of students.
But like other education leaders, Dr. Clark acknowledged that there was only so much reassurance he could offer.
A longstanding policy prevents Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from making arrests at schools and other sensitive locations, such as hospitals and churches.
But right-leaning policy advocates in Mr. Trump’s orbit, including the writers of Project 2025, a blueprint created for the new administration, have pushed to rescind the policy, arguing that to speed deportations, agents should be able to exercise judgment on where they operate. That has left many educators worried that federal agents could arrive at their doors.
“We’re going to follow the law whether we agree with it or not,” Dr. Clark said. “If they have proper documentation to execute their lawful duties, we will work with them.”
The Trump transition team did not respond to a list of detailed questions about migrant schoolchildren and deportation. But in a written statement, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said the president was given a mandate to deport criminals and terrorists.
In communities across the country, local officials have debated how much to cooperate with the incoming Trump administration on deportations. New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, a Democrat, has repeatedly voiced frustration with the number of migrants living in the city, and has recently taken a more conciliatory approach to Mr. Trump.
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An ICE uniform, seen close up.
In New York City, district officials have told principals and school security staff to immediately call a school district lawyer if ICE agents show up at a school demanding access.Credit…Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Associated Press
Mr. Adams runs the New York City school system. Nevertheless, district officials have told principals and school security staff to immediately call a school district lawyer if ICE agents show up and demand access to a school — in part because it can be difficult for nonexperts to distinguish a judicial warrant from other types of paperwork.
In the absence of a judicial warrant, the district “does not consent to nonlocal law enforcement accessing school facilities in any circumstances,” reads the official policy.
For educators concerned about their students being deported, the city has directed them to online information sessions hosted by Project Rousseau, a nonprofit that provides legal services to immigrants.
In one of those meetings, Bethany Thorne of Project Rousseau said teachers should tell families anxious about deportation to keep their children attending school, and to not skip a single court date, even if they do not have a lawyer.
Missing court “is a surefire way to get yourself removed,” she said.
In Chicago, which has enrolled as many as 17,000 recent immigrant students, issues related to the influx have become a factor in the contract negotiations between the teachers’ union and the public school system.
The district is struggling to maintain staffing amid a budget deficit. But because of the many needs of recent immigrant students, schools need more investments for both smaller class sizes and more bilingual teaching assistants and social workers, argued Rebecca Martinez, campaign director for the Chicago Teachers Union.
Among the migrant students are those “who have never been to school, or are in seventh grade and last went to school in second grade,” she said. “All that exists in one classroom, and that’s the pressure educators are facing.”
The school district declined an interview request, but issued a written statement emphasizing its commitment to serving all children in Chicago, regardless of their immigration status or home language.
In addition, the district said it planned to review with principals relevant laws and policies, such as the need for federal agents to display a warrant or demonstrate that there is an “imminent threat to public safety” before entering a school.
In Denver, another hub for recent immigrants, Tricia Noyola, chief executive of the charter school network Rocky Mountain Prep, said that many families had been fearful since Election Day, but also “resolute” in their desire to stay in the country and keep their children in school.
While Mr. Trump often talks about recent immigrants as threats, she said, she and her team have noticed how vulnerable they are — with some parents falling prey to scams in which they are given fake paychecks for construction work or asked to put down a deposit for an apartment that does not materialize.
The superintendent in Los Angeles, Alberto Carvalho, said he hoped schools there would remain “protected ground,” according to The Los Angeles Times. Officials said they would provide information cards to parents outlining their rights, and would hold mandatory training sessions for employees on the limits of federal agents’ access to schools.
Dr. Clark, the superintendent in Mount Diablo, noted that rumors about deportation have detracted from his district’s efforts to educate recent immigrant children.
To make it easier for migrant students, mostly from Guatemala, to work part time, the district has opened a half-day high school program. Encouraging attendance is a priority, but is more difficult when families fear the authorities.
“It’s disappointing that we’re having to have these discussions,” Dr. Clark said. “This talk taking place is a distraction.”
Dana Goldstein covers education and families for The Times. More about Dana Goldstein
What if ICE Agents Show Up? Schools Prepare Teachers and Parents.
www.nytimes.com
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Who will rebuild Los Angeles? Immigrants.
And many of them will be doing it under threat of family separation.
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/09/los-angeles-reconstruction-immigrants-deportation/
Opinion
León Krauze
January 9, 2025 at 3:51 p.m. ESTToday at 3:51 p.m. EST
People return to their home after it was burned down by wildfires in Altadena, California, on Thursday. (Ringo Chiu/Reuters)
Watching the fires raze Los Angeles, a city I called home for years, has been devastating. Santa Ana winds, blowing through the mountains at speeds exceeding 80 mph, have caused catastrophic damage. The west side of the city is barely recognizable. The Pacific Coast Highway, one of the most iconic stretches of the American landscape, lies in ruins. The surrounding area, home to the equally renowned Sunset Boulevard — celebrated in countless dreams and a witness to innumerable Californian sunsets — has been reduced to ashes.
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The full scale of the devastation will be hard to tally for some time. What is clear, however, is the immense challenge that reconstruction will pose. This wildfire is already among the most destructive in the region’s history. Rebuilding will be a monumental task fraught with uncertainty. Building in Los Angeles is notoriously difficult because of complicated permitting and regulations. The city will have to untangle a bunch of its bureaucratic knots — and quickly.
One thing, however, is certain: the rebuilding of Los Angeles will rely heavily on immigrants.
A significant proportion of the region’s construction workforce consists of immigrants. According to a 2020 report by the American Immigration Council, 43 percent of construction workers in California are immigrants. Among these, a majority are of Mexican origin, reflecting a long history of Mexican labor contributing to the city’s development.
The global immigrant shortage is almost here
“Immigrants are the engine of construction in Los Angeles,” Santiago Ortiz, a local designer and building consultant told me. “Without immigrants working the most critical trades in the industry, we won’t be able to rebuild what we have lost over the last three days.”
Immigrant labor has already been vital in the recovery of other U.S. cities devastated by natural disasters. For example, after Hurricane Harvey struck Houston in 2017, more than half of the construction workers involved in rebuilding efforts were immigrants. Thousands of undocumented immigrants worked long hours under grueling conditions, often without proper safety protections, and some were even exploited through wage theft. Despite the challenges, immigrants alleviated a labor shortage in Houston, allowing it to recover more rapidly than anticipated.
Similarly, immigrant workers were instrumental in rebuilding Floridaafter Hurricane Ian hit in 2022. In Southwest Florida, which suffered extensive damage, immigrants made up a large part of the cleanup and construction workforce. Their efforts were particularly significant in areas such as Fort Myers Beach, where entire neighborhoods were leveled. Without immigrant labor, the rebuilding timeline would have been significantly delayed, leaving more residents displaced for longer periods.
Immigrant construction workers are not just vital in emergencies. In California alone, immigrants make up 40 percent of the state’s overall construction workforce. The entire U.S. construction industry depends on their labor year-round. According to the National Association of Home Builders, 31 percent of workers in construction trades nationwide are foreign born. Most plasterers, ceiling tile professionals and most roofers are immigrants. About 23 percent of those workers are undocumented. Almost 40 percent of drywall installers, for example, lacks a permanent legal status in the country.
Immigrants will be the ones bringing Los Angeles back from the ashes. Without them, the city will struggle to recover.
As Trump takes power, vowing to implement punitive immigration policies to vigorously go after the undocumented, it is crucial to acknowledge who truly builds America. It will be a moral failure that as immigrants work to get Southern California back on its feet — cleaning up mountains of debris, erecting wooden beams, installing drywall and wiring electrical systems — they will be doing so under threat of family separation. Their children will be going to school terrified that their parents could disappear at any moment.
As during the covid-19 pandemic, the United States is asking its immigrant workforce to perform essential tasks. The least it can do in return is to grant them peace and security instead of subjecting them to persecution and discrimination.
Opinion | Who will rebuild Los Angeles? Immigrants.
www.washingtonpost.com
And many of them will be doing it under threat of family separation.
The neoliberal model that risks destroying the public university
Although the protesters are rallying against the current government, which is responsible for the latest budget cuts to the universities, it is worth remembering that this intervention is part of a wider established trend that did not originate in Italy.
global.ilmanifesto.it/the-neoliberal-model-that-risks-destroying-the-public-university
The “state of unrest” at Italian universities is an important signal. After so many years, the different protagonists in the world of academia, from students to teaching staff (tenured or not), have demonstrated together against yet another cut in the resources allocated to public universities.
This was a significant achievement, because, from the Gelmini reform onward, the various legislative interventions targeting the national university system were defended by the politicians who promoted them by resorting to the same playbook every time: pitting the interests of those who had already joined the academic world on a stable basis against those who aspired to do so, particularly by suggesting that reforms were necessary to purge the universities of “do-nothings” and make room for “the deserving.”
For example, the introduction of a new way of funding the universities, based on a mechanism of rewards and punishments devised by an independent agency, ANVUR, endowed with powers so broad as to erode those of the relevant ministry, was defended by a wide, cross-party consensus that brought together not only most political parties, but also the major press outlets and business associations. Anyone who tried to oppose it was immediately branded as a defender of “do-nothings,” an enemy of progress and an obstacle to the development of young people.
This is why it is important that nowadays, researchers who are not yet tenured are in the front row of the protests against the new cuts. This massive participation by the younger generation tells us that the nakedness of the proverbial emperor is now visible to all, and that the idea that the creeping privatization of the Italian university system was necessary to make room for the excluded was only an ideological device to achieve a political goal that had little chance of being accepted by the public if it had been properly informed about what was at stake in the “reforms.” We will see in the coming months whether the “state of unrest” will have the effect of fostering a new awareness among public opinion of the danger that Italy is about to lose one of the greatest social achievements of the post-World War II era: a plural and inclusive system of higher education, able not only to train technicians and professionals, but also to nurture the dynamic public culture that is an essential requirement of democracy.
Although the protesters are rallying against the current government, which is responsible for the latest budget cuts to the universities, it is worth remembering that this intervention is part of a wider established trend that did not originate in Italy. The policies of defunding public universities, and the bean-counting contrivances used to justify them, were first introduced in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s by Conservative governments. With the Education Act of 1988, the Tories replaced the “consensual” funding system that had enabled the expansion of the British public university system, which opened it to students from the less affluent classes, and progressively to the children of immigrants as well, introducing an extraordinary process of renewal of the ruling classes. Those who want to understand the social significance of that period can read the captivating account written by historian Tony Judt, the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Judt explains why it would most likely have been impossible for someone like him to be admitted to Cambridge and have a brilliant academic career without that massive public support.
When the Conservatives began the process of starving out the British public university system – continued by governments of both left and right ever since – the British academy was far from a den of “do-nothings,” but a model held up as a standard around the world for its outstanding achievements (as Ralf Dahrendorf has pointed out). The goal of the new governance and accountability systems introduced then, and refined later, was to subordinate public education and research to the needs of the production system. Anything that could not be justified on the basis of a stifling and myopic view of economic growth was to be discouraged. Academic freedom, for centuries a cardinal principle of the British system, started to become eroded (as historian Conrad Russell saw with great lucidity, who wrote a book denouncing this trend in 1993).
Today, British universities are at the end of their rope, forced to lower standards to attract more students (whose numbers have declined further due to Brexit), and prestigious departments are laying off valuable scholars and closing productive departments (especially in the humanities) because they can no longer afford to keep them operational due to resource shortages. These neoliberal policies implemented in the UK since the late 1980s are the model on which Italy's policies are based. In some cases, they have been made even worse by the acquiescence of the academic body, which has put up a far-less-effective resistance so far compared to their British colleagues.
“What are universities for?” This was the question posed a few years ago by Cambridge historian Stefan Collini in his book of the same name, one of the best and most thoroughly researched works on the disaster that neoliberal universities have turned into. This, I think, is also the question being posed by the “state of unrest” in Italy. It is up to civil society and politics to give an answer.
Originally published at ilmanifesto.it/il-modello-neoliberale-che-rischia-di-distruggere-luniversita-pubblica on 2024-12-21
Il modello neoliberale che rischia di distruggere l’università pubblica | il manifesto
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