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No students removed after crackdown
Published October 7, 2009
No children were removed from public school classes following a crackdown on students caught crossing the border during the morning of Sept. 9.
When immigration inspectors at the port between Del Rio and Ciudad Acuña, Coah., Mex. reported that more than 500 school age children had crossed the bridge on a Monday prior, San Felipe Del Rio Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Kelt Cooper decided to take action.
Cooper says under state law students are required to live within the district where they attend school with few exceptions, but the information provided by immigration officials seemed to indicate many were not abiding by the rules.
So, on Sept. 9, Cooper sent district staff to the bridge to intercept students and direct them, through a letter handed to parents, to the district's pupil services office to verify residency under threat of removal from school.
Of the 195 student identified by district personnel that morning, Cooper said roughly 150 immediately proved residency.
“Ninety five percent of our students were easily found in compliance,” said Cooper.
He said a handful simply never returned to school and the remaining students who did not report to pupil services Sept. 9 have been identified and the district is working to verify their residency.
Though news of Cooper's actions circulated nationwide, and became a discussion of race and immigration status, he says that has no bearing on his decisions.
“It comes down to residency. Our system operates on tax dollars and it would be disingenuous for us to continue billing the taxpayer for educating students in our district illegally,” said Cooper.
“We don't have the latitude to apply a moral standard on this and bill the taxpayer.”
Children crossing the Rio Grande to attend school is nothing new and is something Cooper, who was born, raised and spent most of his career in border communities, has seen before.
In 2002 Cooper, then the superintendent of the Nogales school district in Arizona, was among a charge in that state to weed Mexico residents out of its school systems.
“This has been going on for decades,” said Cooper in September.
“It's a game of cat and mouse and it's not specific to Del Rio.”
In fact, Cooper says residency requirements present problems for school districts across the state, not just along the Mexico border.
In bigger central Texas cities like Austin and San Antonio, parents will circumvent residency requirements to get their children into top notch schools, said Cooper, which can lead to overcrowded classrooms and a drain on resources.
Even in Del Rio, many parents send their children to Comstock Independent School District in western Val Verde County for an education.
Cooper said there is nothing wrong with that, so long as the receiving school district has space and accepts the student.
“Because they are within the state, the money follows the child,” said Cooper.
It's when students reside outside the state that it becomes a problem.
“I spoke with a superintendent along the Texas-Louisiana border and he's having similar problems,” said Cooper.
Keeping up with where a child lives is essential to the district for many reasons. Even if a student moves from one area of town to another, it is important to know that information as it helps the district determine where more teachers are needed or where new school should be built, explained Cooper.
But tracking that information from year-to-year is a challenge, and something that hasn't been done adequately in Del Rio for some time, said Cooper.
Some districts require students to register for school every year and provide residency information at that time, but Cooper said that would be cost prohibitive in a district with more than 10,000 students such as San Felipe Del Rio, which only requires students to register once and asks parents to keep information updated as it changes.
Cooper said often the district doesn't learn that a child's information has changed until an emergency arises.
“We might have a child that falls and breaks an arm and we can't locate the parent or guardian,” said Cooper. “It's usually during those types of situations that we learn of living arrangement changes, when a district official tries to locate that parent and discovers they don't live where they said.”
Clearing up the residency issue is one that will be difficult, but Cooper said his administration is brainstorming ways to make it easier and more efficient, and hopes to present ideas to the school board in the near future.
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