Public School Is For The Entire Public

Last week, the Justice and Education Departments issued new guidelines reminding public schools that they are required by law to accept all students regardless of their or their parents’ immigration status:

The guidelines come in response to a number of reports that schools are denying undocumented immigrants entrance on questionable grounds. Undocumented parents living in Butler County, New Jersey were unable to enroll their kindergarten-age children in school because the Butler Public School District had a policy requiring parents to provide state- or county-issued photo identification, a document that requires a social security number and valid immigration status, leading the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to file a lawsuit in March. The ACLU also found that 138 New Jersey school districts asked for documents that indicated immigration status.

Dara Lind looks at some of the ways public schools have evaded that obligation:

When Alabama passed an anti-unauthorized-immigrant bill in 2011, one provision required public school teachers to record the immigration status of their students, and submit it to the state once a year for a “report.”

The Alabama bill didn’t say that anything bad would happen to students who reported that they or their parents were unauthorized. But it didn’t have to. Hundreds of students across the state stayed home from school the day the law went into effect, as families were scared that the results of the “report” would be sent to law enforcement or federal immigration agents.