Escalating federal immigrant raids from Minneapolis to Oakmont have set students, families and educators in the Pittsburgh region on edge.
Rumors of an ICE agent approaching Taylor Allderdice High School's campus in Squirrel Hill last week had students and teachers on high alert.
On Friday, about half of the students Joseph Papa, an English language development teacher, works with at Faison K-5 in Homewood were absent amid rumors of immigration enforcement agents in the neighborhood.
"And the thing is that not all families are always comfortable sharing the reason that they're keeping their child at home is because of these fears," Papa said. "They're worried about disclosing information, which is understandable.
"And so they might say that the child is being kept home because of sickness, when in reality it's because of other fears and other concerns about what's going on with the immigration raid."
City school board members unanimously passed a resolution in 2017 barring ICE agents from entering PPS buildings without clearance from the district's legal department and superintendent.
And while federal guidance previously restricted Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from acting on or near school grounds, the Trump administration rescinded that guidance last year. ICE encounters have since been reported at schools in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Chicago.
In Idaho and California, parents have been detained after dropping off their children at school. Jose Flores, who was released from ICE custody over the weekend, was getting his eight-year-old daughter ready for school in the Pittsburgh suburb of Oakmont last month when he was detained.
"As a teacher, what I think about always is, if a child is in that constant state of fear and experiencing that, their ability to learn is compromised," Papa said. "A kid can't learn to their fullest potential when all day long they're thinking about, what would happen if I don't see my mom and dad when I go home tonight?"
Teachers, parents strategize
Roughly one in 10 of Pittsburgh Public Schools' nearly 18,000 students are English language learners, according to district data from October.
At Allderdice High School, the English language learner population has grown by more than 50% over the past three school years.
The rumors circulating around the school community last week were false, according to district spokesperson Ebony Pugh. She said a community member visited the school to ask if ICE was present, leading to concern that ICE was there, which was not the case.
But social studies teacher Traci Castro said the chain of events has prompted some Allderdice teachers to strategize ways to protect students and respond to their needs proactively. On Friday, nearly a dozen teachers gathered in a colleague's classroom to begin brainstorming their response.
"I know some people are interested in doing training, like the legal training stuff," Castro said. "I know someone put up posters on the walls to say to know your rights."
"I could speak for myself and several of my colleagues: people are very angry, worried, infuriated, horrified," she continued.
Parents and educators have also convened on the messaging app Signal to alert each other to suspected ICE sightings and plan their response.
Recent guidance from Pennsylvania's Department of Education encourages districts to ensure that their policies maintain student privacy, establish policies and procedures in the event a student's parent is detained or deported, and designate a point person who will interact with immigration enforcement personnel.
Attorneys with Weiss Burkardt Kramer, a law firm that represents more than a dozen school districts throughout the region, issued guidance last year with steps educators should take in the event ICE approaches their school. That includes calling their district's legal department, sharing any judicial warrant, court order, or subpoena the agent presents, and then alerting the superintendent and families involved.
But federal officials are now telling ICE agents they have broader powers to arrest people without a judge's warrant, which conflicts with that advice.
Castro said that justifies more immediate action from school districts.
"There should be more proactive stuff and [we should] not wait for ICE to come around our school because the potential exists," Castro said. "Squirrel Hill…it's a very diverse area."
"I think we should be more on the lookout and reach out to the community more," she added.
Attendance impacts felt, but "not yet a trend."
During a public hearing last year, Brashear High School teacher Kim Daelhousen said Spanish-speaking students in her English language development classes were already on edge, chatting nervously about the specter of deportation.
"That's where we are right now," she told board members at the time.
In California's Central Valley, these fears translated to a 22% increase in daily student absences, according to one Stanford study. Student absences reported by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Schools in North Carolina nearly tripled two days after Border Patrol agents arrived there this fall.
Pittsburgh, unlike these areas, has not seen a large-scale immigration enforcement action. City schools have only seen slightly elevated rates of absence, according to James Fogarty with A+ Schools.
"And so it's hard for me to say whether that's a function of ICE enforcement or just the fact that we had a huge amount of snow days just last week," said Fogarty, whose organization monitors student attendance data.
But Fogarty noted there have been some notable increases in absenteeism at schools in the district with large English language learner populations.
Research shows missing large amounts of school is a leading indicator of whether a student is likely to read proficiently by third grade or graduate from high school, especially in low-income households.
Papa, who works with students at three schools in Pittsburgh's East End, said these absences are becoming more and more noticeable to the district's English language development staff and other teachers at PPS.
He said it's also making educators' jobs more difficult as they work to keep students engaged in the classroom.
"And that's not to ask for any sympathy or anything like that," Papa said. "But it's just to know that there are ways that we've learned to do these things, and they're just not sufficient because of how much fear is present in these communities right now."
He says this tension has put a strain on the whole school community — not just his English-learning students.
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