Asylum Seekers Face Challenges Getting Kids into City Schools

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“We had to fight to get here,” Flora Lugo said in Spanish. She took her partner’s hand as they looked around the small office in P.S. 145, in New York City’s Manhattanville neighborhood. Lugo and Yanelly Rodriguez struggled to get to New York from Venezuela and now they found themselves in a different kind of struggle. They were trying to enroll their two children in elementary school, and they were told there was only room for one. P.S. 145 had already welcomed 75 migrant children since school started in fall 2022.

New York City’s Department of Education schools have registered over 6,100 newcomers since this fall. The children and their parents are among the 21,000 asylum seekers, mostly from Venezuela, sent by Texas Governor Gregg Abbott and the city of El Paso. Lugo’s son was admitted to third grade, but Rodriquez was told there wasn’t room for her kindergarten age daughter.

Rodriguez said, “With all the things we’ve gone through, we were not going to let this stop us. My daughter needs to get an education I could only dream about.” She and her partner lived openly as a gay couple in Venezuela, and they say they faced harassment and discrimination. That was one of the reasons they left their tiny apartment in the middle of the night with just the clothes on their backs. They carried a backpack filled with cans of tuna, a tarp, and a pocketknife.  The two women and their children traveled with other migrants seeking sanctuary through the dangerous Darien Gap jungle in Panama and Columbia. It took them 14 days. The two women shared responsibility in carrying their children in their arms to complete the journey.  “Living freely was never easy for us in our country, every minute was a struggle. So, we needed to escape,” Rodriguez said.

In Mexico, they paid a smuggler to get them across the Rio Grande into Texas. After they arrived at the Port Authority in September, they began to get help from a not-for-profit group Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid. An outreach worker, Adrianna Perez, who also came from Venezuela, helped them get settled in a shelter on Central Park West near P.S. 145.

Before migrants from South America arrived, the school had taken in 50 Ukrainian refugees and Russian asylum seekers who fled Russia’s war on Ukraine, according to Naveed Hasan, a P.S. 145 parent who chairs the multilingual committee for the school district’s local education council. He said, “We are working hard to accommodate our families with the transition.”

It took a week, but the administration at P.S. 145 agreed to admit Flora Lugo’s daughter Maria to a kindergarten class. School officials said they realized the importance of keeping the two children in the same school.

The DOE has partnered with the Dominican Republic to recruit bilingual teacher to the city this fall.  Parent organization have donated clothes and school bags to support families. Lugo said, “I am amazed at all the help we’ve got for ourselves and our children. It feels like a miracle after what we’ve been through.”

The women and their children continue to face adversity. There are language barriers, and financial strains, but they are optimistic.

“The hard part is over for me. I’m here now and I’m living for my kids’ future,” Lugo said.

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