At a time that Alabama is discouraging undocumented immigrant parents from sending their children to school, New York City is taking measures to welcome not just the children, but the parents themselves in the schools.
The New York Immigration Coalition and the City Council announced in a press conference at City Hall today that they will establish a Family Resource Center in a public school in each of the five boroughs to offer counseling and workshops on college admissions, financial planning for college, access to banking and other services.
The resource centers are part of an initiative begun earlier this year to encourage immigrant parents to come into schools to meet with teachers and be more involved in the education of their children. Under prodding from the coalition, the New York Police Department’s school Safety Division and the city’s Department of Education expanded the allowable identification a parent needed to get into a school to include consular ID’s that are popular among undocumented immigrants because they are issued regardless of immigration status.
“We’re opening the doors so parents can come in,” said Claire E. Sylvan, Executive Director of International Network for Public Schools, one of the nearly 200 immigrant advocacy and service agencies in the coalition. “This is a city that relies on immigrants and need our support.”
A new law adopted in Alabama requires public schools to register the immigration status of all students. This and other strict immigration measures are designed by the state to discourage unauthorized immigrants from living in the state. Many immigrant families have been pulling their children out of the schools and moving away.
While the attitude towards immigrants in New York has always been more welcoming, the old, stricter ID requirement inadvertently often kept immigrant parents from ever stepping foot into their child’s school.
In the last year, the New York Immigration Coalition has even worked with the Mexican Consulate in setting up five-day long events in schools throughout the five boroughs in which immigrant families could obtain consular ID’s and passports if they didn’t have them. The Dominican and Ecuadoarian consulates will host similar events in the schools in the coming months.
The new Family Resource Centers presumably would be involved in such efforts. Officials today said the host schools would be named in January. They were to say that the services would be for all immigrant communities, and not just Hispanics
P.S. 24, located in Sunset Park, was one of the first schools to host an ID event in the city. Nearly 2,000 people from the local community and across the borough attended one of the school’s two ID events.
“We had to send people back. We had to say we cannot take care of you at this point. We couldn’t serve all the people who demanded the service,” said Leticia Alanis, director of La Union.
Mariana Gaston, the assistant principal at P.S. 24, doesn’t know if the school will be the official site of the Family Resource Center, but said that she is excited by the close relationship that the school has developed with the New York Immigration Coalition.
“It has been very successful and we are very proud to play this role in this community,” says Gaston. “Because we know that as schools develop this perspective and this relationship with the community, [parents] will develop trust that schools are places where they can come and get information and get their needs met—educational needs as well as health needs.”
Carla Trujillo, a parent and Sunset Park resident, says that the schools have already opened their doors.
“We feel supported by the centers,” says Trujillo. “We have more ability to connect to the learning of our children now.”
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