New York City public schools are facing a wave of new students on the first day of the school year Thursday as the nation’s largest district grapples with a massive influx of immigrants.
City officials were reportedly scrambling to enroll an estimated 19,000 immigrant students into the city’s public schools, often while exempting them from vaccine requirements typically required of students.
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The crisis in the nation’s most populous city is unfolding as President Joe Biden and his administration have faced widespread criticism over their handling of the southern border crisis, which has seen millions of immigrants flow into border states from Central America.
In response, border state governors such as Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) began bussing immigrants to major metropolitan areas such as New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, with the Big Apple receiving more than 60,000 immigrants over the past year.
Amid the ongoing crisis, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams have been calling on the Biden administration to assist the state and city with the thousands of immigrants. Adams, in particular, has asked the administration to grant work visas to allow the immigrants to work legally in the United States and has openly criticized the Biden administration for its handling of the immigrant crisis.
In New York City schools, the sheer number of immigrant students joining the city’s classrooms is raising questions about the ability of the city’s educational infrastructure to cope with the sudden increase of enrolled students. The school district did not respond to a request for comment.
“Let’s estimate a 22-student classroom,” Lora Ries, the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “That equals 164 new classrooms that are needed, and there’s no way that schools can ramp up that fast at that scale.”
The influx of students, Ries said, is no doubt going to affect the quality of education offered in the city’s public schools, as district teachers are suddenly forced to handle a larger number of students than they were expecting.
“The resources are just exorbitantly high, and it affects all the other students. Education is going to suffer for it, and this is on the heels of what COVID shutdowns did to education and reading levels and math levels,” she said, referring to the decline in reading and math scores during the pandemic.
“This is just aggravating an already bad situation,” she added.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), whose congressional district includes the New York City borough of Staten Island, said the situation is giving parents “every reason to be angry and concerned” and noted the drain the crisis is having on city resources.
The “18,000 children of illegal immigrants added to an already overcrowded school system at the cost of $38,000 each means $684 million less in resources for and attention to children of taxpaying citizens,” she told the Washington Examiner in a statement.
But while concerns were raised about the school district’s ability to handle the influx of students as classes resumed, conservative critics were especially alarmed at recent revelations that the city was allowing immigrant students to enroll without submitting proof of vaccinations against diseases such as measles, mumps, chicken pox, polio, and tetanus.
Malliotakis noted that the exemption was especially worrisome given the prevalence of disease among immigrants crossing the southern border. She also noted that many city employees who declined to receive vaccinations for COVID-19 were forced out of their jobs and still have not been reinstated.
“Mayor Adams needs to explain why he is letting them evade vaccine requirements,” the congresswoman said. “To require less from migrants than we do citizens is the ultimate double standard. This is particularly concerning after there have been confirmed cases of tuberculosis, hepatitis, syphilis, gonorrhea, COVID, and dengue fever at [the] border. Meanwhile…our brave firefighters, police, and teachers are still fighting to get their jobs back!”
Curtis Sliwa, who was the Republican nominee for New York City mayor in 2021, told the Washington Examiner in an interview that he has three sons in New York City Public Schools, and they’re not allowed to attend school without being vaccinated “with every conceivable vaccine from A to Z,” yet the immigrant students are allowed to attend without them.
“We have close to 19,000 children that will be walking through the front doors, most of them not vaccinated for anything, nevermind for COVID-19,” Sliwa said. “How do you justify that?”
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, a spokesperson for New York City Hall said that “All students are required to be immunized to attend public school” and that the city Department of Education defers to the CDC’s guidance on immunization schedule and catching up on missed vaccinations.
“Once a student is enrolled, families must get students vaccinated, following the CDC’s requirements regarding age-appropriate immunization catch up,” the spokesperson said. “Students in temporary housing are not required to immediately submit documentation, including immunization records, in order to participate in any enrollment process.”
Sliwa said that the city government was “operating without a plan” and that the mayor is “a swagger man with no plan” who is “just throw[ing] up whatever [he’s] got on the wall and see if any of it sticks.”
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A major source of the problem, he said, is New York City’s status as a sanctuary city, which he said no one is trying to change but can easily be reversed.
“There is no law in New York City that says we’re a sanctuary city, it’s by proclamation,” he said. “Tomorrow, we can announce we’re no longer a sanctuary city. But they still want to fight to be a sanctuary city and a sanctuary state. So guess what? Now, we must suffer as a result of that. And we are, and it’s going to only get worse.”
