[quote=harvey][quote=njtosd]
Brexit aside – questioning the practical reality and costs associated with immigration does not make one, by definition, an ugly nativist anti immigration type. Almost 7% of kids K-12 in US schools have at least one parent who is undocumented. That is a significant issue and I am so tired of everyone acting like there’s a money tree somewhere that can pay for all of it. Everyone wants to be nice but there is not an endless supply of $.[/quote]
What’s the issue?
K-12 education is a long-term investment that society makes. Public education has historically provided huge returns.
All of American history teaches us that educating children, including the children of immigrants, has tremendous benefits for all Americans. There’s no reason why the documentation status of a child’s parents would change that outcome. Educating children in America – all children – is a win for everyone.[/quote]Um, harvey, we’ve been thru this before a few times on this forum. The immigration status of the parents are of little concern when tens of thousands of kids are crossing the border every day to attend public school in CA alone (very possibly as much as 40K). They’re non-residents who are taking up seats of the children of bona-fide taxpaying residents. In SD County, a portion of the seats these non-resident students are taking up (using “fake” addresses and fake “guardianship affidavits”) are in modern, well-equipped schools built with Mello Roos Bonds. The parents and other homeowners in the area who are paying these bonds (some paying over 1.5% of their assessed value just in MR bonds) are beyond livid that their local school is overflowing with border-crossing students! As they should be. See re CA:
The problem is of epidemic proportions along the southwest border of the US. However, AZ and NM do NOT have state residency requirements to attend public school there while TX and CA DO have very specific residency requirements. In CA, it is the LAW that the student must be a resident of the district and attendance area of a particular public school to be able to attend it (absent possession of a zone transfer or inter-district transfer issued to them by a CA school district (their own or another district within their own county).
This has been the “dirty little secret” here in South SD County that no one wants to talk about let alone even attempt to address, including CVESD’s and SUHSD’s public school administrators at the very top. And it is well beyond high time that this subject was placed front and center in this important election year. Tens of thousands of resident families here in South County (including my own) have watched their kids age out of the public school system over the years while it was filled to the brim the entire time our kids were attending grades K thru 12 with dozens and even hundreds of “border-crossing students” in every school …. all day, every day. Many of the students joke in secret with each other that they actually live in TJ (or beyond in MX) and make the trek to that school every day via private car or trolley/bus and ALL of our administrators and teachers full well know it and have known it for decades.
It’s easy for someone who lives 25-200 miles from the Int’l border to post self-righteous comments on this forum implying that other posters are “racist” or “nativist” whilst simultaneously flicking the flies off their own starched cuffs, lol …. Of course, the problem is not in THEIR backyard and THEIR OWN kids’ education(s) have not been noticeably impacted by this phenomenon. So it all seems so “benign” to them that “a handful of deserving Latino kids” (read: the token Latina in flu’s kid’s class that he posted here about) are receiving a US public education. The issue is NOT about race or nationality. It is about RESIDENCY, plain and simple.
Sure, a portion (20-30%?) of these daily border-crossing K-12 students are “anchor babies.” But their parents are never going to move to the attendance area of the US schools their kid(s) are (successfully) stealing seats from. Why? Because it costs 4-10x as much for housing within 10 miles north of the Int’l border than it does to live in or around Tijuana, BC. It’s never going to happen. This situation will go on until the school districts hire more residency personnel to cross reference addresses, do drive-bys on boarded up and unoccupied homes (which district students are using as their “addresses”) and step up their unannounced residency checks on ALL students who filed “guardianship affidavits” to prove residency (including inspection of bdrms and clothes closets) of addresses these students’ listed as their purported “residence” on their “guardianship affidavit.”
Just like the receipt of TANF (cash aid), a student using a “guardianship affidavit” to establish residency to attend a public school in a particular school district should be required to consent to such a search as a condition of having their affidavit accepted by the school district, IMO. A TANF recipient is not allowed to cohabitate with another wage earner whose employer has reported their wages to the state without reporting the wages of their cohabitant every month to their social worker (and have their cash aid suspended or modified, accordingly) or they could be charged with welfare fraud. By agreeing to collect TANF, they agree in writing to be subject to a random, unannounced home visit. A public school student using a guardianship affidavit to establish “residency” to attend a particular school should be forced to agree to be subject to the same scrutiny. The public education they are receiving off the backs of CA taxpayers costs $7-10K per year for each student, which is about the same amount as a US citizen parent receives in cash aid (TANF) for 1-2 kids (approx $6500 for the first kid and about half that for the second kid).
As a local K-12 public school parent for 27 years (my kids never attended any one school at the same time due to age gaps), I am in hopes that a really bright flashlight will be shone on this subject in the coming months/years … no matter WHO wins in this election. It costs these states a FORTUNE to educate this never-ending northbound flow of students. These saved billions (from no longer voluntarily educating tens of thousands foreign students in our public schools within border counties) should instead be spent on CA’s crumbling infrastructure.
