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AN AMERICAN EDUCATION: CLASSROOMS RESHAPED BY RECORD MIGRANT ARRIVALS

The arrival of more than half a million school-age children since 2022 has
strained school budgets and left teachers grappling with language barriers, a
Reuters survey found.

By Ted Hesson, Kristina Cooke and M.B. Pell
October 5, 202412:00 PM GMT+2Updated 7 hours ago
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A 6-year-old girl who arrived from Haiti in July 2023, and is now in first
grade, heads to the public elementary school in Charleroi, Pennsylvania.
REUTERS/Carlos Barria
CHARLEROI, Pennsylvania - Dana Smith had been teaching first grade at the public
school in the small Pennsylvania town of Charleroi for more than 16 years when
she found herself confronting a new challenge last year: a sharp rise in
students from Haiti who did not speak English.
She started using a phone app to translate lessons, but the constant pauses for
translation frustrated her. She wondered if she was hindering the learning of
American students who knew some of the basics she was reviewing, a complaint
raised by a vocal segment of parents in the district.
“It was very stressful,” she said. “We never know when we’re going to get new
ones coming in, where their levels are, how adjusted they are to this culture.
The unexpected.”
More than half a million school-age migrant children have arrived in the U.S.
since 2022, according to immigration court records collected by Syracuse
University, exacerbating overcrowding in some classrooms; compounding teacher
and budget shortfalls; forcing teachers to grapple with language barriers and
inflaming social tensions in places unaccustomed to educating immigrant
students.
Advertisement · Scroll to continue

To gauge the impact of immigration on public schools across the U.S., Reuters
sent a survey to more than 10,000 school districts. Of the 75 school districts
that responded, serving a total of 2.3 million children or about 5% of the
public school population, a third said the increase in immigrant children had
had a “significant” impact on their school district.
While not exhaustive, the Reuters’ survey, the first by a media organization,
offers the most extensive view to date of how U.S. public schools are grappling
with record migrant arrivals across the southern border.
Immigrant students attend first-grade at the public elementary school in
Charleroi. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
The responses spanned school districts across 23 states, from Texas to Alaska,
and include the largest urban district of New York City as well as the tiny and
rural Hot Springs Elementary School District in southern California, with just
16 pupils.
Forty-two districts said they had hired more English as a Second Language (ESL)
teachers and consultants. Fifteen districts described difficulties communicating
with parents or a lack of interpreter services.
“Textbooks are not in their language. Resources are not easily available. Google
Translate does not work that great,” the Springfield City school district in
Ohio said in its response to the survey conducted between late August and late
September.
Advertisement · Scroll to continue

Republican candidate Donald Trump has made immigration a top talking point in
the Nov. 5 presidential election, blaming his Democratic opponent, Vice
President Kamala Harris, for record numbers of migrants illegally crossing the
U.S.-Mexico border during President Joe Biden’s administration. Trump also
faults Harris for a Biden program launched in late 2022 that allowed legal entry
to 530,000 Haitians and others with U.S. sponsors.
At a rally in Arizona last month, Trump used Charleroi, a town an hour south of
Pittsburgh, as an example of the negative impacts of immigration. About 2,000
immigrants, including about 700 Haitians, live in the town, with many arriving
in the last few years, according to Charleroi Borough Manager Joe Manning,
swelling a population that declined from over 11,000 a century ago to 4,200 in
the 2020 census.
Flames rise from a chimney at an industrial park near Charleroi. REUTERS/Carlos
Barria
“Charleroi, what a beautiful name, but it's not so beautiful now,” Trump told
supporters. “The schools are scrambling to hire translators for the influx of
students who don’t speak, not a word of English, costing local taxpayers
hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Washington County, where Charleroi is located, backed Trump over Biden in 2020
by 23 percentage points, symbolizing a part of the rural vote that could help
Trump win Pennsylvania, the most important of the election battleground states
that could decide control of the White House.
Advertisement · Scroll to continue

The vast majority of Haitians arriving in the U.S. since 2023 entered legally or
are eligible to remain and seek work permits through the Temporary Protected
Status program.
While Trump has derided a wide range of immigrant groups throughout his
political career, he has taken particular aim at Haitians, questioning while
president in 2018 why the U.S. would accept Haitians and immigrants from
‘shithole countries’ in Africa.
An immigrant walks along a street in Charleroi's town center. Washington County,
where Charleroi is located, backed Donald Trump over Joe Biden in 2020 by 23
percentage points, symbolizing the Republicans' strength in rural areas.
REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Amy Nelson, an assistant principal in the Charleroi school district, holds a
mobile phone showing a flier posted at a local social media account which reads
"Foreigners & Haitians Out, There is no place in America for this filth!"
REUTERS/Carlos Barria
He thrust immigration to the forefront of a Sept. 10 debate with Harris when he
repeated a false rumor that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield,
Ohio. Public schools and other city buildings in Springfield received bomb
threats after the debate.
Amy Nelson, an assistant principal in the Charleroi school district, said the
school has not received direct threats but she is concerned about anti-Haitian
posts in a local Facebook group, including a re-post of a purported Ku Klux Klan
group describing Haitians in Springfield in derogatory terms and calling on
Americans to “stand against forced immigration.”
In response to a Reuters request for comment about the effects of migration on
schools, a campaign spokesperson pointed to Trump remarks at a Sept. 23 rally in
Pennsylvania.
Advertisement · Scroll to continue

“It takes centuries to build the unique character of each state," Trump said at
the time. "Reckless migration policy can change it very quickly.”
The Harris campaign touted $130 billion directed to schools under Biden’s 2021
economic stimulus package. Harris “will build on those investments and continue
fighting until every student has the support and the resources they need to
thrive,” Harris campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement to
Reuters.

> More important than how we have been impacted, is how our migrant students are
> impacted by our lack of resources to meet their needs.

Response from the Appleton Area School District in Wisconsin to Reuters' survey

White House spokesperson Angelo Fernandez Hernandez said the Biden
administration has increased funding to address teacher shortages and requested
$50 million in new funding to support English language learning.
In the Reuters survey, 17 districts said they requested additional state funds
to help immigrant students. Twelve of these districts reported receiving
additional funds - including a district in New Jersey that said it still wasn’t
enough to hire an ESL supervisor.
Ten districts said their teachers were not well trained or received no training
to meet the needs of new immigrant students, and 42 said they would welcome more
training for teachers and administrators. The training requests included how to
teach kids who don’t speak English, how to approach different cultural norms and
how to help kids recover from trauma.
“Anytime you have an unpredictable pattern of student enrollment all at once,
the strain it creates on the system is tremendous,” Denver Public Schools
Superintendent Alex Marrero wrote in his response. Denver has seen a huge
increase in migrant arrivals since 2023, in large part due to the state of Texas
busing 19,200 people from the U.S.-Mexico border to the Democratic-run city.
In addition to the language barriers and differences in educational backgrounds,
the jump in arrivals “required our system to stand up processes across the city
to not only communicate with families but also support them in getting their
basic needs met in order to have students coming to school ready to learn,”
Marrero wrote.
Still, 11 respondents said - unprompted - that the newcomers had enriched the
school community, bringing new perspectives and resilience that other children
could learn from.



SIGNS OF STRAIN

On a rainy Wednesday morning at Charleroi High School, students shuffled between
classes in small groups. “Hello, my Haitian friends,” one American student said
as he passed Haitian girls walking in the opposite direction.
Julnise Telorge, an 18-year-old from Haiti in her final year of high school,
said she feels safe in Charleroi - despite the time last school year when a
white student bumped into her in the hallway and made a derogatory comment.
Telorge said the comment upset her and that she did not know why someone would
say that. “I think because she doesn’t like Blacks,” she said.
School district officials said they were unaware of the incident.
The number of non-English speaking students in the 1,450-student Charleroi Area
School District shot up to 220 currently from just 12 in the 2021-2022 school
year, according to the district administrators. About 80% percent of those
students are of Haitian descent, Superintendent Ed Zelich said.
Like many of the Haitians arriving in Charleroi, the Telorge family were
attracted by job openings at Fourth Street Foods, a plant packaging frozen
breakfast foods located on a hill just below the school complex. Telorge’s
father, Julis, works at the plant where he earns $15 an hour, he said. He is
applying for asylum.
Julnise Telorge, an 18-year-old immigrant from Haiti in her final year of high
school, looks at her phone during class in Charleroi. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Julis Telorge, a Haitian asylum-seeker who works at a plant packaging frozen
breakfast foods in Charleroi, stands on the porch of the house he and his family
share with several others. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
About a third of the plant’s 1,000 workers are Haitian, according to its owner
Dave Barbe, who said that there are not enough Americans in the area to do the
work.
The school district has hired five new staff members, including three teachers
specializing in English for non-native speakers, as well as a part-time
interpreter, Zelich, the superintendent, said.
He estimated the cost at $400,000 a year, a fraction of the district’s $30.7
million budget, but a cost the district has covered while it waits for possible
reimbursement by the state.
And there are additional costs.
After parents of 37 children pulled their kids out of the school district this
year to send them to the local charter school, the district was legally required
to pay an additional $500,000 for transportation and the higher charter school
tuition, Zelich said.
Beth Pellegrini, who attended Charleroi public schools herself as a child and
served on the Parent Teacher Association, said she decided this year to send her
three children to the charter school in part because teachers were too busy
trying to communicate with non-English speaking students to give them enough
attention.
Her 7-year-old daughter was struggling with math while her sons, who are older,
have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
“My kids were all falling behind,” Pellegrini said. “It wasn't just the
immigrants, but it felt like the teachers didn't have the time to dedicate to
them.”
Joseph Gudac, the Charleroi school district business manager, said he expected
the local school tax there would need to increase if the number of non-English
speaking students keeps rising.


MAKING PROGRESS

The new dynamic in some American classrooms has challenged teachers to adapt,
but it hasn’t been without strains.
In the United States, all children, regardless of their immigration status, have
a right to a free public education. But the federal government pays for only a
small fraction of newcomer educational services.

> The teacher shortage is bad enough, but the shortage of bilingual teachers is
> exceptionally difficult.

Response from the Cleveland Independent School District in Texas to Reuters'
survey

Smith, the Charleroi first grade teacher, workshopped ideas with her colleagues
on how to cope. She paired Haitian students with more advanced English skills
with beginners, she said. She used more physical cues, pointing to get students
to sit in their seats. She incorporated repetition into her lessons,
particularly around language.
Yet when the school offered to pay for teacher training, Smith did not want to
take on another work assignment on top of her day job.
“That’s just one more thing that I have on my plate that I would rather not
have,” she said, noting that she planned to retire in a few years. “They should
be wanting to learn our language, learn our culture.”
Despite the challenges, Smith said the situation has improved. While she has six
English language learners out of 17 students in her classroom this year, they
all attended kindergarten at the school and have a good working knowledge of the
language.
Charleroi assistant principal Amy Nelson is in the process of adopting a young
Haitian girl in Dana Smith’s class, who went from speaking no English when she
entered school last year to receiving an award for academic excellence,
according to Nelson. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
During a class last month, she started the day with basics: roll call,
sharpening pencils, reviewing the days of the week, and the Pledge of Allegiance
to the American flag in the back corner of her colorful classroom.
The students followed the lesson and responded to cues.
“They have already had a year under their belt,” she said. “So I can see that
their progression has made a big difference.”
One Haitian girl in Smith’s class went from speaking no English when she entered
school last year to receiving an award for academic excellence, according to
Nelson, the assistant principal. The girl’s mother died of breast cancer last
year and Nelson and her husband are trying to adopt her.
“She is so resilient,” Nelson said.


HOPES FOR THE FUTURE

When Haitian students at Charleroi's high school need to talk to a teacher, they
often go to Bridget DeFazio.
DeFazio, 40, started teaching French at the school in 2008. Her language skills
suddenly became more sought after as dozens of Haitians, many of whom understood
or spoke French, enrolled in the middle school and high school.
Teacher Bridget DeFazio chats with Telorge during an ESL class at the high
school in Charleroi. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
DeFazio and another teacher paid out of pocket for an ESL certification last
year and she now teaches ESL classes in addition to French.
“Yeah, it has been challenging, but for me, a good challenge,” she said. “I
mean, I've been here 17 years, so it was almost like a breath of fresh air for
me, something new that I can try.”
When students walked into her ESL class last week, she greeted them in Haitian
Creole.
The 10 students in her class took notes and answered questions as she ran
through adjectives - smart, dumb, funny, happy, sad, shy - in a booming voice
that filled the room.
“I've never seen kids more eager to learn,” DeFazio said. “At the end of the
day, they are teenagers. They're going to get into trouble, they're going to be
late for class, they're going to test the limits. But when I pull them aside and
talk to them, it's, ‘OK, madame, we get it.’”
An immigrant student walks in the hallway at the public elementary school in
Charleroi. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Get weekly news and analysis on the U.S. elections and how it matters to the
world with the newsletter On the Campaign Trail. Sign up here.

Reporting by Ted Hesson in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, Kristina Cooke in San
Francisco, and M.B. Pell in New York; story editing by Suzanne Goldenberg and
Mary Milliken; data editing by Benjamin Lesser; photography and video by Carlos
Barria; video production by Olivia Zollino and Grace Lee; art direction by
Jillian Kumagai.

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Ted Hesson

Thomson Reuters

Ted Hesson is an immigration reporter for Reuters, based in Washington, D.C. His
work focuses on the policy and politics of immigration, asylum and border
security. Prior to joining Reuters in 2019, Ted worked for the news outlet
POLITICO, where he also covered immigration. His articles have appeared in
POLITICO Magazine, The Atlantic and VICE News, among other publications. Ted
holds a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of
Journalism and bachelor's degree from Boston College.

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Kristina Cooke

Thomson Reuters

Kristina Cooke is an investigative reporter with Reuters focused on immigration
and criminal justice. She and colleagues were Pulitzer Prize finalists for a
series on migrant child labor in 2023. Her work has received several journalism
awards, including a George Polk award, a National Headliner award and an
Overseas Press Club award. Originally from Germany, she joined Reuters in London
in 2005, and is now based in San Francisco.

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M.B. Pell

Thomson Reuters

Michael Pell has worked on the Reuters’ data team since 2013. At Reuters Pell
was part of a team that exposed fraud and slum-like conditions at
privately-owned military base housing across the country resulting in a major
military landlord pleading guilty to fraud in federal court. Pell worked on
stories that uncovered the harms caused by COVID lockdown policies and
identified thousands of neighborhoods across the country with higher rates of
child lead poisoning than Flint, Michigan during the peak of that city’s water
crisis.

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