Community members packed a high school auditorium in Chelsea, Massachusetts, last month to oppose the school board’s plan to cut 70 positions, including reading coaches, special education staff and counselors.
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The layoffs will help reduce an $8.6 million budget deficit, due in part to the loss of 350 students.
Sarah Neville, a board member in the Boston-area district, knows one reason enrollment is down. Under federal law, districts can’t ask whether students are U.S. citizens, but almost 90% of the 5,700-students are Latino and 47% are English learners. The state education agency estimates that the population of English learners in Massachusetts schools has dropped by 7,000 since 2024. Officials from Chelsea and other metro-area districts say absenteeism increased as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted raids in Boston last fall.
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The district is among several across the country now confronting the financial impact of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. Whether students are absent from school, families have been detained, or they’ve left the district or the country on their own, the empty desks add up.
Districts no longer have federal COVID relief funds to fall back on, and many already saw steep enrollment declines during the pandemic. The Chelsea board is one of several in Massachusetts asking the legislature for one-time grants to help address the shortfall. With fixed costs like payroll and contracts with vendors, a sharp drop in enrollment “creates chaos,” Neville said.
In Texas, officials from Houston, San Antonio and several districts in the Rio Grande Valley are among those who say the immigration crackdown has contributed to further enrollment loss and, with it, potential drops in state funding.
Districts’ heightened concerns over finances come as conservatives increasingly argue that American taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bill to educate undocumented students in the first place.
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Pointing to Census Bureau figures, a 2024 report from the subcommittee estimated that educating non-citizen students in U.S. schools costs about $68 billion a year. But during the hearing, Democrats highlighted long-term benefits of providing students access to education, like $633 billion paid in state and local income taxes and contributions to the U.S. economy worth more than $2.7 trillion.
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In Minnesota, districts are still hoping for some relief. On their behalf, a national nonprofit asked lawmakers to temporarily suspend a state law that requires districts to drop students from the rolls if they’ve been absent for 15 straight days. The legislation allows exemptions for emergencies.
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Fridley Public Schools, near Duluth, Minnesota, has lost 20 students because of the 15-day rule.
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Fridley’s enrollment would have been down another 400 students if the district hadn’t quickly implemented a virtual learning program, Lewis said. But federal agents used the device distribution process to apprehend those they suspected to be undocumented, she said.
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The Chicago Public Schools last fall saw steep declines in attendance that coincided with Operation Midway Blitz, according to an analysis by Kids First Chicago, an advocacy group, and the Coalition for Authentic Community Engagement, representing multiple nonprofits. On Sept. 29, the Monday after enforcement activity began, nearly 14,000 students at schools serving high percentages of Latino students were absent, the report showed.
The district uses enrollment counts from the early part of the school year to make budget and staffing decisions. If students missed school on those days, or if the district eventually dropped students out for extended periods, those absences could affect funding, explained Hal Woods, chief of policy at Kids First Chicago.
District leaders can only estimate how many undocumented students are entering, or leaving, their schools, and that’s a problem, Mandy Drogin, a senior fellow at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, said in testimony before the House subcommittee. She blamed 2014 Obama-era guidance that warned districts against asking for students’ or parents’ citizenship status for enrollment purposes.
While many English learners are U.S. citizens, she called out districts under state takeover, like Fort Worth and nearby Lake Worth, which have English learner populations above 30%, according to the state. “Illegal students,” she said, are impacting schools as a whole.
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The post ICE Raids Caused Enrollment to Drop. Now Districts Are Paying the Price appeared first on American Renaissance.
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