Dive Brief:
- School officials in the Los Angeles Unified School District have been instructed not to comply with requests from immigration officers until the district's superintendent and lawyers have had an opportunity to review those requests, according to new guidance issued Tuesday.
- Local radio station KPCC reports the new resolution is the third in 15 months aimed at protecting students and their families from immigration officers. The difference this time, said an ACLU official, is that it explicitly states what school officials are not allowed to do, rather than leaving it as discretionary.
- Officials hope the policy will mostly serve as "a deterrence from ICE so that they don’t interfere with children or their ability to learn," KPCC reports.
Dive Insight:
There is a lot of concern in both higher ed and K-12 circles about the impact of anti-immigration orders on school operations and student learning. When students are concerned about whether they or their family members will be deported today, they will likely have a difficult time focusing on their studies and succeeding in class.
But there is also a lot of concern from school officials about how to approach the issue. Some cities have declared themselves as sanctuary cities, but most jurisdictions have opted not to take a stance. As we've seen with the ongoing saga surrounding transgender bathroom rights, sometimes political fights that pit states/cities or individual schools against the federal government threaten federal or state funding, and no school can afford to have its funding withheld over politics.
Any decisions regarding how an individual school district or college campus will handle the immigration issue should be clearly stated and leave nothing to the discretion of those who will execute it — this was the strong point of the recent LAUSD policy. However, just as important as an explicit policy on how to deal with immigration officials must be an explicit declaration of the way students are to interact with each other. Incidents like the recent posters at UT-Arlington instructing "White Americans" to turn in any "illegal aliens" should not be tolerated, and a culture of respect and inclusion for all students must come from the top. Administrators at all levels of the education system cannot afford to simply say nothing. It is incumbent on school leaders to set the tone and the expectations before incidents arise and act swiftly in the event that something does happen.