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Plenty Of Strategies – And Little Funding – To Address Refugee Students’ Needs

In his revised executive order, President Trump has cut the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. by more than half. But since the fall of last year, nearly 1800 refugees have already re-settled in New England, and more than a third of them are children and teens.

Source: U.S. State Department

At Philip G. Coburn Elementary School in West Springfield, Massachusetts, students come from all over the world.

“My Mom and Dad are from Sudan.”

“My Mom and Dad are from Iraq”

“Turkey.”

“Afghanistan.”

“Nepal.”

“I’m from Iraq.”

Most of the English language learners here arrive as refugees. Inside an English language learning classroom, second graders learn English along with math.

“If I have halves, I have two equal parts,” teacher Steph Duggan showed her students. “I have two parts that are the same size.”

Duggan uses words, drawings and hand signals to describe math vocabulary. The children watch, listen, repeat — and then explain the concepts to each other

Working with one student is teacher’s aide Sara Almoula, who was once a refugee student herself.

“I’m from Iraq and I came with no English,” Almoula said.

Almoula’s father worked as a translator for the American military in Mosul. But it became unsafe. The family fled to Kurdistan; then six years ago to West Springfield, where Almoula started high school.

“I felt like I couldn’t do it and it was so hard,” she recalled. ” I had no friends. I had nothing. Everything was new to me.”

Almoula, who’s now in college, said a turning point came when a history teacher wanted to know her story.

“He was like asking about our culture and asking about home and so many things that he really care about. And it made me feel like I want to learn more. ”

Inviting refugee students to share their history is a way to help them feel a part of a school.

“Make them feel happy and wanted,” said Ken Pransky, who first taught students who were refugees 30 years ago in Amherst.

“It was pretty traumatic,” he said. “Their families had just been a part of the Cambodian holocaust and they were living in refugee camps. And they were coming, like in T-shirts, shorts and sandals in the winter.”

Pransky recalled some kids were so overwhelmed by the large brick school with hundreds of students, that — at first — they hid under the tables.

“Expectations are different,” he said. “Weather’s different. Food is different. Everything is different. It’s scary.”

Joan Snowdon also learned a lot from teaching Cambodian refugees. Today she teaches English language learners at Amherst High School. She said if a student has experienced trauma, consistent and predictable teachers help them learn.

Amherst High School Teacher Joan Snowdon taught Cambodian refugees. (Nancy Eve Cohen for NEPR)

“It really helps kids to feel they are in control of their lives if there were times when they felt they were not in control of their lives, when no one was in control of the situation,” she said.

Snowdon even writes the date and the class agenda on the same place on the board every day — and makes sure they’re prepared for the bells.

“It really helps them to know that the bells ring at 7:45 a.m.” she said. “That this is what happens in this building. This is where this club always meets. So they can start to feel this is their community, this is their school, they belong here and they’re safe here.”

Some kids last attended school in refugee camps or haven’t been in months, years or ever.

“Students who have never been to school would need to understand what school is and how one behaves…and the purpose and everything we take for granted about understanding what schools are,” said Julie Sugarman, an analyst with the Migration Policy institute. “They might not have literacy skills in any language. They may need to learn to read and write while they are learning English.”

Doing this well can cost schools more money for more staff.

“The refugee funding specifically is a tiny amount,” Sugarman said. “The only funding that I know of that is specifically dedicated to refugees is the refugee school impact grant and that’s about $14.6 million for the whole country.”

The New England states received about $1.4 million dollars — with the lion’s share going to Massachusetts, which has the most refugees in the region.

“That money is meant for additional English as a second language, for after school programs, maybe for interpretation or working with parents,” she said. “But it’s really very, very limited and only goes to a few school districts in a state, so most refugees are served through the same kind of funding as other English learners.”

And, in fact, schools are supposed to treat refugees the same way as any other student — not according to their immigration status, but according to their educational needs.

Colleen Marcus, the director of English Language Learning in West Springfield, Mass., where many of the English learners arrive as refugees. (Nancy Eve Cohen for NEPR)

Colleen Marcus, the director of English language learning in West Springfield, said her district gets creative when it comes to funding.

For example, Marcus said, when hiring teacher’s aides, the district looks “for someone who speaks a second language, a language that’s going to help our students and teachers and families is just smart.”

West Springfield even has a janitor who speaks Nepali. He taught in a school in a refugee camp.

When asked about the challenges of educating children who are refugees, Colleen Marcus insists there are only benefits.

“What we learn from these children and these families about life and love and family and perseverance,” Marcus said, “is a gift to all of us.”

This report is part of a series called “Facing Change.” It comes from the New England News Collaborative, eight public media companies coming together to tell the story of a changing region, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

NEPR News Now Podcast: Fatal Fire, Border Taxis, I-91 Casino Corridor, Vesuvius Artifacts

On this episode of NEPR News Now:

  • Small Town Comes Together After House Fire Kills Mother And Four Children (NEPR)
  • As More Asylum-Seekers Flee To Canada, Taxi Rides To The Border Raise Red Flags (VPR)
  • What Could Another Connecticut Casino Mean For East Windsor And Springfield? (NEPR)
  • Exploring The ‘Villas’ Of Oplontis, Pompeii’s Often Overlooked Neighbor (NEPR)

Hosted by Sam Hudzik, NEPR News Now is a collection of recent features, interviews and commentaries.

SUBSCRIBE on iTunes.

CHECK OUT all of NEPR’s podcasts.

Resettlement Agency Hopes To Bring In More Refugees Ahead of Trump’s Order

A resettlement agency in Western Massachusetts is hoping to welcome more refugees into the country before President Trump’s latest executive order goes into effect next week. The order suspends the arrival of new refugees for at least 120 days.

Kathryn Buckley-Brawner, executive director of Catholic Charities in Springfield, said her agency is trying to figure out what the order means for people who are waiting to get here.

“I’m trying to zero-in on whether there is any possibility that those who are in the pipeline — in other words, already have been approved by the State Department –whether within the next 10 days or so those families could still move,” said Buckley-Brawner.

Buckley-Brawner said she wants to get three refugees from Afghanistan here, who have been approved by the State Department.

Since the president’s last executive order was blocked by the courts, more than 200 refugees have resettled in New England.

Officials: Mother And Four Children Killed In Warwick Fire

A mother and four children were killed when flames swept through their home in the small Franklin County town of Warwick.

Officials said the fire broke out in the single-family home early Saturday morning.

Warwick Fire Chief Ron Gates became emotional as he said the house was fully engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived, and there was little they could do to prevent the tragedy.

“We’re a very tight bunch, and obviously this is tough on all of us,” Gates said at a Saturday afternoon news conference, according to WWLP.

According to published reports, two other members of the household — a father and child — escaped with minor injuries.

The state fire marshal said the blaze appears to be accidental, and may have originated at a wood stove in the kitchen.

A statement from the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services said the number of fire-related deaths statewide in 2017 is now 18. That includes three victims from a fatal Holyoke fire in January.

Last September, a fire in Greenfield killed four, including a four-year-old boy.

The Associated Press and the NEPR newsroom contributed to this report.

As More Asylum-Seekers Flee To Canada, Taxi Rides To The Border Raise Red Flags

As high volumes of migrants flee the United States to apply for asylum in Canada, one popular route into Quebec is just west of Lake Champlain. To get to the snowy illegal crossing, many are calling a cab.

But there’s a catch: Some of those cabbies are coordinating with U.S. Border Patrol, and that practice has some civil liberties advocates concerned.

For most people looking to apply for asylum in Canada, it’s not as simple as showing up at a checkpoint. That’s because an agreement between the two countries says if an asylum-seeker is already in the United States, he or she cannot then apply for asylum in Canada.

So many are walking across the border illegally between checkpoints.

Plattsburgh, New York, is about 25 miles south of the border. It’s the last Greyhound stop before the border checkpoint. It’s also the last place to grab a cab.

But if you do call a cab, someone else could be alerted, too:

“When the call comes in, we contact Border Patrol; we say, ‘Hey, we got a call, it’s going to this location, here’s our ETA to that location,'” one Plattsburgh cab company owner explains. He has asked to remain anonymous because he doesn’t want any trouble with authorities.

Word-of-mouth protocol

He says he bought into the taxi business in October, and the first time he dropped someone off at a rural road that dead ends at the Canadian border “then immediately, we got a call from Border Patrol say, ‘Hey, this is protocol,’ and from that point on we’ve always followed protocol.”

But Michael Estrella with U.S. Border Patrol says, “there’s no requirement for a cab company to check-in with Border Patrol as to their activities.”

Yet Dylan, a driver with Northern Taxi, also said it was his company’s policy to call U.S. Border Patrol when they get a request for drop-off at a known illegal border crossing location.

“We usually call Border Patrol, U.S. Customs, on our side … and they usually meet me there to check them out,” he says.

Estrella wouldn’t comment further on how taxi companies might be under the impression that this protocol is required or encouraged.

All he would say is that U.S. Border Patrol does “get help from the community in various ways,” but wouldn’t say whether taxi companies are among those community members who call-in.

“I’m not going to get into a specific persons or person who is contacting us,” Estrella says. “They’re doing it as a service to themselves and the rest of their community.”

Profiling by destination

James Lyall, the director of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, says the practice of taxi drivers alerting authorities could have real civil rights implications.

“It’s not the job of the cabbie to interrogate people, or assume anything about those people,” says Lyall. “It’s certainly not their job to do the job of the Border Patrol for them. And they can’t be required to do the job of the Border Patrol by the Border Patrol.”

Lyall says that if asylum-seekers learn that requesting a cab ride to a certain location may result in being detained, “people are very likely to take greater risks, put themselves in greater danger to avoid the Border Patrol just as they do crossing the southwest border.”

Within 100 miles of the border, U.S. Border Patrol can stop people who they have reasonable suspicion are in violation of immigration status. But Lyall says he isn’t clear that driving to the border would count as reasonable suspicion.

“An awful lot of vehicles go to the border. And courts have said that you can’t base reasonable suspicion on a characteristics that would apply to large number of valid or lawful actions,” says Lyall.

The cab drivers we talked to are taking people to a known illegal crossing location in the middle of the woods. But going to the border itself is not an illegal act. It’s only once a person walks across the border outside of an official checkpoint that a person can be arrested.

To be clear, if U.S. Border Patrol stops a taxi and the passengers have paperwork showing they are in the U.S. legally — say they have a tourist visa, or perhaps they are in the process of seeking asylum status here — then U.S. Border Patrol cannot detain them. That’s even if they are about to walk illegally into Canada.

Desperate to reach Canadian soil

But some asylum-seekers don’t have legal status in the United States – and they can be arrested by U.S. Border Patrol before they reach Canadian soil.

The Plattsburgh cab company who asked to remain anonymous says he witnessed such an arrest last week, and it changed his mind about the so-called protocol of alerting authorities.

He says he was dropping off a woman from Haiti. Years ago, she had fled to the U.S. seeking political asylum and now has a young son who was born here.

Her visa had expired, and before the taxi reached the Canada border, she was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol.

The cab driver says the Border Patrol agent said she would likely be deported back to Haiti, and her son would likely be put into foster care in the United States.

The cab owner says after witnessing this, he changed his company’s protocol. Now, the dispatch alerts Canadian authorities when they get a border run request.

Then, he said, the passengers can be arrested in Canada, where they have a shot at applying for asylum.

This report comes from the New England News Collaborative: Eight public media companies coming together to tell the story of a changing region, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

NEPR News Now Podcast: Conway Cleanup, Trump Support, Valley Rebrand, Refugee Reflection, Journalists Warning

On this episode of NEPR News Now:

  • Clean-Up Begins After Unheard-Of February Tornado Rips Through Conway (NEPR)
  • One Month In, Trump’s Biggest Massachusetts Supporter Looks Past Stumbles (NEPR)
  • Online Ridicule Follows Re-Branding Of ‘Pioneer Valley’ As ‘West Mass’ (NEPR)
  • Poet Ocean Vuong On The Refugee Experience And Literature (NEPR)
  • Journalists: Members Of The Opposition Party? (NEPR)

Hosted by Sam Hudzik, NEPR News Now is a collection of recent features, interviews and commentaries.

SUBSCRIBE on iTunes.

CHECK OUT all of NEPR’s podcasts.