Schools in the South were most affected. More than one of seven educators in the South and one in eight nationally, reported that students’ learning was significantly affected because of their concern over classmates’ being deported.
“This is affecting everybody,” Gándara said. “Other kids in the classroom, in the school, these are their friends, and their classmates are walking into the classroom and seeing empty chairs.”
Justin Minkel, who was Arkansas Teacher of the Year in 2007 and teaches first-graders, said all of his students are immigrants, with some documented and some not. About 99 percent of students in his school are poor, he said.
“There are a lot of heartbreaking cases,” he said.
One of his students this year is 6 and his mother can’t get health care because she is not here legally. Her kidneys are failing. She struggles daily with whether to go back to Mexico to get care and risk being able to return to her child.
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Students feel the effect of the president’s rhetoric on immigrants at a “visceral” level, he said. One young student he found crying soon after Trump’s election told him she and her mom would have to put their things in a bag that night in case they were forced to leave.
“I always kind of think our job is to help kids live the lives they dream. It goes so far beyond teaching, reading and writing and math. It’s making them feel safe,” Minkel said. “There is a real feeling of not being safe.”
He said the school superintendent has been supportive and has told the district personnel that where the children come from doesn’t matter, because “once they walk through the door they are our children.”
Lupita Ley Hightower, superintendent at Tolleson Elementary School District in Tolleson, Arizona, said teachers often call her about how to console or counsel students “in crisis” over immigration because she was once undocumented herself.
She said her school has a number of programs to help ease fears, including working with parents to provide information about their rights, connecting students seen as anxious or depressed with an individual “caring adult,” training teachers and encouraging children to “time travel” to see themselves in reaching their future dreams. She said they refer to their children as kids at hope, rather than kids at risk.
Her school district is more experienced in dealing with the effects of immigration crackdowns having experienced former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and SB1070, a law the state passed that widened local officials’ immigration enforcement powers.
“We really try to create the safest atmosphere in school for parents and the community,” Hightower said.
Dan Domenech, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, said the immigration enforcement fallout is being raised at association meetings.
Children come to school in tears, worried that their parents will be taken away and that immigration officers are going to come into the school and arrest them, Domench said. Children are also dealing with backlash from other students who taunt them, he said, such as chanting “build the wall,” which was often heard at Trump’s campaign rallies and speeches.
“The atmosphere in school is certainly affected and charged,” Domench said. “Students are very much being impacted by this. They live in fear.”
That adds to the litany of issues educators are dealing with, including school shootings and anxiety over loss of health care. Although Congress eventually funded the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, potential cuts to Medicare funding have put about $4 billion in funding for special education in jeopardy, Domench said.
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Gándara said the survey found teachers, counselors and administrators are also feeling stress and anxiety because of what their students are facing and the atmosphere they’re trying to educate in.
Many respondents said they had students with family members who had been deported and the deportations were known to the entire class and community, which reinforced fears about students’ own safety or of their friends.
Educators also said one or both parents of some students have been deported or lost a job because of their immigration status, making things even worse for some students.
“I want to tell them things will be all right, to make them feel better, but I know I cannot truthfully say this,” one teacher said in the survey. “Things may not be all right.”
Additional findings from the survey include:
- Eighty percent of respondents said they had seen behavioral or emotional problems in students as a result of stepped-up immigration enforcement. The problems were usually described as crying, being unable to speak, being distracted or feeling depressed.
- A clear majority (57.4 percent) of respondents said they are seeing increased absenteeism, which can affect school funding. Respondents reported students hiding for days while news of raids circulated. By skipping school, some children miss the only meal they may get that day.
- More than 60 percent of respondents reported some decline in academic performance in students, although they also reported notable resilience in spite of the circumstances. Teachers reported seeing grades plummet among students who had been high achievers or had been working toward college.
- Students are going to work to help support families or take on a missing parent’s duties. For example, one fourth-grade teacher in the Northeast told researchers that her student “told me that her mom is teaching her how to make food and feed her baby sister in case the mom is taken away.”
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