LAUSD student enrollment drops amid immigration raids. Superintendent warns of long-term impact
As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues its crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the superintendent for Los Angeles Unified says it's having an impact on the school district.
Enrollment is down and LAUSD . Superintendent Alberto Carvalho warns there will be a long-term impact on all students if the trend continues.
A mother, who wants to be known as Maribel, spoke to 7 On Your Side Investigates about the challenges she's facing.
Maribel is undocumented and now parenting her 6-year-old daughter, who attends LAUSD's Esperanza Elementary, on her own after her husband was detained while he looked for work outside a Home Depot. He's since been deported back to Guatemala.
"It's affecting the children," Maribel said as she spoke through tears.
"The children have fear that makes them not want to go out on the street."
Maribel says despite her daughter not wanting to leave her first-grade class, she may have to move her and her daughter back to Guatemala to financially stay afloat and reunite with her husband.
"The conversations that this mother is having about trying to make decisions about their future, uprooting them from the only home that some of them have ever known is just unacceptable," Carvalho told 7 On Your Side Investigates.
Right now, the district's enrollment stands at just over 409,000 students. That's down 4% from last year and 2% more than what was projected.
"The projection for this year was off by a significant margin, and that margin is absolutely associated with federal immigration actions in our community," Carvalho said.
For every single student, LAUSD brings in about $20,000 in state and federal funds used to pay for a variety of programs many students use and benefit from.
"We lost 7,000 more students than we anticipated," Carvalho said. "The loss is as high as $140 million for one single year. If that continues, then year after year, then we're talking about a significant impact to the budget."
When the superintendent was asked what he makes of the argument that if parents like Maribel came to U.S. legally, they wouldn't then have to potentially remove their children from their schools.
"You know, these are difficult conversations," Carvalho responded. "What I can tell you is this, at no point should two wrongs necessarily be turned into a right. There are children involved. Our nation depends on immigrant labor."
But LAUSD is likely to lose at least one more student.
Maribel says despite her daughter begging her to keep her enrolled at Esperanza Elementary, she says it's becoming more of a struggle every day to stay in L.A. without her husband.
