N.O. public schools accused of allegedly violating federal law

20th October 2014   ·   0 Comments

By Kari Dequine Harden
Contributing Writer
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As a parent, you do not have to provide your child’s social security number to enroll in public school.

However, a recent survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and VAYLA (Vietnamese American Young Leaders Assoc­iation) found that the enrollment and registration practices of more than half of the city’s public schools “violate federal law and discourage enrollment of immigrant children and families.”

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling more than 30 years ago maintained that it is unconstitutional to deny a child in the United States a public education based on the child’s immigration status.

Educating all children is in the best interest of the entire community, said Jennifer Coco, a staff attorney with the SPLC. “We don’t make children pay for the crimes of their parents,” Coco said.

This year, schools saw a significant increase in the enrollment of Spanish-speaking children, many who arrived in New Orleans after fleeing from violence in personal loans in mcallen tx Honduras and other Central American countries.

Providing a social security number is voluntary for families, and there is no state policy requiring it. But at 55 out of 83 public schools in New Orleans, there was no indication on the forms that it was optional.

In addition to discouraging immigrant families, there are privacy rights that affect all families, noted Coco. With regular large-scale data breaches and identity theft a common occurrence, privacy concerns across the nation are only seeing an increase.

State Superintendent John White came under fire in recent years for providing student data to the storage nonprofit inBloom. White later announced that he was withdrawing the data.

In June, Gov. Bobby Jindal signed a bill aimed at protecting the personal information of students. As part of the bill, the state must develop a system for unique student identification numbers by May 1, 2015. By June 1, 2015, every student in the public school private money to lend system will get a number.

Many of the enrollment policies at New Orleans schools also required a parent to provide a driver’s license or state issued ID, “when federal law requires schools to be more flexible in accepting other forms of photo identification,” according to the SPLC.

In New Orleans’ fragmented system of largely privatized public schools, each school or charter management organization (CMO) has a different set of paperwork for parents. Even when schools call themselves “open enrollment,” and the OneApp unified enrollment process, parents must navigate through another level of entrance requirements.

With that second round in the enrollment procedure, Coco said she questions the efficiency of the system.

Coco said that she’d like to see things simplified for parents. “Do the enrollment forms have to be so complicated?” Coco questioned. “We think the schools can do better.”

The SPLC sent letters to the Orleans Parish School Board and charter management operators found to best cash advance Santa Clarita CA be in violation of federal law and demanded that they correct their forms by October 31.

“Far too many immigrant families who call New Orleans home have attempted to enroll a child in a public school only to be discouraged when they see the application forms asking for documents they don’t have, and encounter school personnel who aggressively ask them for proof of citizenship,” Minh Nguyen, executive director of VAYLA said in a news release. “This only serves to make the immigrant community feel targeted and intimidated. We are simply asking school leaders to comply with the law.”

Coco said that in her communication with the schools, she found that for the most part, any discouragement to enroll was unintentional. There were primarily two responses, she said. The first was the mistaken belief that Recovery School District (RSD) or state policy required a social security number.

The second response was that it was simply a personal loan bryan tx standard part of the form and parents could leave it blank if they wanted.

But the form must say optional, Coco said. “It’s an incredibly simple fix – say it’s optional and explain why.” There’s no reason attorneys should need to get involved, she said.

Josh Densen, the CEO and school leader at Bricolage Acad­emy, said that the SPLC did a “great service to advance the ease in which parents can register.” He said that at his school, in no way did he want to dissuade anyone from enrolling. Not indicating that the social security number and driver’s license was optional was a mistake, he said.

Bricolage also stood out because on the first page of their enrollment packet they included an “Orleans Parish request for criminal history,” as part of their registration checklist. The form for the background check was included at the end of the packet.

Bricolage provided SPLC with a follow-up email addressed to parents personal loan processing fee that clarified that the background check was optional and only necessary if parents wanted to volunteer.

Densen said they made a mistake. He said they were simply trying to get paperwork done on the front end, and they’ve already made the necessary changes. Densen also said that he was going to reevaluate the OPSB background check policy for volunteering, so that parents with something like an old DWI on their record might not be automatically disqualified.

Coco said that she also sees issue with the Sophie B. Wright Charter School requiring an essay. Something like that could discourage a special needs student, or English-language learner.

One of the primary criticisms of the privatization of education in New Orleans has been the neglect and exclusion of the most vulnerable kids and those with the highest needs.

With limited oversight, schools have unprecedented control over whom they let in, and how they design their enrollment procedures.

The top 10 bad credit installment loans SPLC did not file a complaint regarding the violations, instead asking the schools to comply with the law by the end of the month.

In May, the federal government issued updated guidelines for schools “to ensure enrollment processes are consistent with the law and fulfill their obligation to provide all children—no matter their background—equal access to an education.” That included not requiring a driver’s license, state ID, or social security number.

“This discrimination affects all children, but particularly immigrant children with every right to attend these public schools,” Coco said in the news release. “Regardless of status or nationality, these vulnerable children are a part of the fabric of our community and it’s in the best interest of not only the child but also the community that they be enrolled in a school and receive an appropriate education. And the law supports this notion.”

This article originally published in the October 20, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.