


New York City school officials still have yet to spell out how they plan to handle the nearly 20,000 added migrant children in the Big Apple — leaving school staffers sounding the alarm with just two weeks left until the first day of the new year.
The Department of Education has provided scant details on the return to school process with the influx of kids over the summer, even as parents have been up in arms worrying about the lack of info on preparations.
And now, insiders say they are also stuck as they prep for the new year with no instructions while their school leader, Chancellor David Banks, continues his Martha’s Vineyard vacation into next week.
“We got no specific instructions regarding migrant students nor have any shown up to register or been sent via the welcome center this summer,” a Bronx administrator fumed to The Post.
Another DOE insider said they haven’t heard a “peep” about a plan.
“Seems like everyone is out on vacation,” the person griped.
Craig Slutzkin — who sits on the Community Education Council #2, which covers the Upper East Side, Midtown and Lower Manhattan, where many asylum-seeking kids are being housed — said it’s been radio silence from the DOE.
“In terms of a plan, I’ve heard nothing,” said Slutzkin, adding, “I’m hoping there’s a plan and they just haven’t communicated it.”
“Last year, a lot of principals had to figure it out on their own, but it shouldn’t be left to the principals, there should be a central DOE plan.”
The concerns are compounded as the threat of a school bus strike continues, a massively disruptive possibility that would affect 150,000 NYC kids.
School officials kicked the can down the line when asked about how they are expecting to handle the migrant children, saying more details would be made public over the next two weeks.

During a briefing on asylum seekers on Wednesday, Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said a school rep is expected to join a migrant briefing at City Hall soon.
“The DOE is constantly working on enrollment and which schools and where should the young people be going to school, so I suspect that in the next two weeks, we’ll probably have somebody here at the DOE and focus on going back to school,” she said.
Just under 19,000 kids in temporary housing, the overwhelming majority of whom are asylum seekers, are enrolled in the city school system, according to the DOE.
The school system says it will rely on Project Open Arms, a program created last year with more than 3,000 English as a New Language licensed teachers and nearly 2,000 bilingual instructors to help the migrant kids get up to speed.
“Regardless of their immigration status or language spoken at home, every student deserves access to high-quality schools that meet their unique needs,” school’s spokesperson Nicole Brownstein said. “Project Open Arms reflects our department’s coordinated effort to support our students and our schools, and this effort will continue in perpetuity as it always has.”