As school returns to session, New York City is struggling to accommodate students as some 21,000 newly enrolled migrant children push the Big Apple’s public schools to overflowing.
Despite data from the Department of Education released on Wednesday showing over one-third (36 percent) of students in the city’s schools to be chronically absent from their studies, New York City educators are warning that the coming school year will be a difficult one.
“It’s a capacity issue,” one teacher told the New York Post on Thursday. “They should have worked this out two days ago!”
At Newcomers High School in the borough of Queens, students waiting to enter the school had to stand in a line that snaked around the school for several blocks. Some were even forced to relocate to a nearby institution, Gotham Tech High School, which shares facilities with Newcomers.
However, the overflow at Newcomers triggered a subsequent one, with Gotham students on the receiving end. “The Gotham students are being pushed out to a facility across the street that the principal will be walking them over to this afternoon in groups,” one educator told the Post. “Gotham only has three classrooms as of right now, I think.”
George Kara Lekas, a teenager at Gotham from the Queens neighborhood of Astoria, told the Post that the school dysfunction has given him second thoughts about continuing his studies at the high school. “They gave us crap! No information! I’m getting a late start and I left early. I’m two subway stops away. I mean, look at this?!” the 14-year-old said.
“I’m going to try to transfer into the Academy of American Studies, like as soon as I can!” Lekas added. “Yeah, it’s because of this! I think the Academy of American Studies will be much better. I think so.”
One teacher reportedly stood at the front door of the school, instructing students in Spanish to separate based on the identification cards they had. “If you have ID, the left door. No ID, the right door. You pick up your program in the auditorium.”
Some teachers and school officials have sought to make the most of a difficult situation. “We are welcoming all these migrant students into our schools with open arms. We know it’s a larger political issue, and that the mayor and others have to deal with. But when they show up in our schools, they get the best that we have,” Chancellor David Banks told the Post.
On Wednesday, Mayor Eric Adams said during a town-hall chat in Manhattan that the 100,000 illegal migrants who have inundated the city since last spring “will destroy New York City.”
“Let me tell you something, New Yorkers. Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this,” the mayor said. “Now we’re getting people from all over the globe [who] have made their minds up that they’re going to come through the southern part of the border and come into New York City.”
During his talk, Adams said the ongoing immigration crisis will cost city taxpayers $12 billion by July 2025 if the influx of migrants is not stanched shortly.