The immigration task force updates the School Board on recommendations.
By Autumn Diesburg and Emily Kresse
A task force created to analyze the needs of student immigrants presented its recommendations to the Iowa City School Board during its meeting Tuesday evening.
Kingsley Botchway, the director of equity and engagement for the School District, led the task force to determine how the district will address the two resolutions passed on March 28.
After attending the Eastern Iowa Refugee Summit, Botchway said, he decided to include a recommendation to establish an Immigration Advisory Board to continually provide input and guidance for students and their families.
“As we’re thinking about policy changes, we want to make sure that we’re getting all people at the table talking about it,” he said. “So one of the things that I hope for this Immigrant Advisory Board is that we’ll provide for an opportunity to talk through some of the elements that are very important … I want to make sure that, you know, we have an Immigrant Advisory Board that we can run that through as well as the community at large, but it’d be good to get that feedback.”
School Board member Phil Hemingway believes an Immigrant Advisory Board is necessary.
“I think that your suggested next step of creating an advisory board is extremely important — to have a group, because if anything, recent politics has shown us decisions can happen in an instant,” Hemingway said. “They can change family status combatively within minutes or hours. So, I think it’s important to have a group ready to step in.”
According to the Support for Immigrant Students and Families Student Task Force update presentation, in a survey, 65 percent of students reported hearing hurtful comments about immigrants from other students. Additionally, 25 percent of multiracial students reported that their school is not a welcoming and safe place.
“While we look at the advisory board as we move forward, we really need to think about how we can ensure that we are including more welcoming and inclusive elements for all of our students,” Botchway said. “And I think that having the advisory board is very important moving forward.”
School Board member LaTasha DeLoach said immigrants come from all nationalities, and it is important that the district’s Equity Department help the district accommodate diversity.
One of the task force’s recommendations was to create community education opportunities, such as a “Know Your Rights” presentation for students and families affected by immigration enforcement, and distributing information materials to families facing deportation.
The task force provided ways for the district to guide students after the passing of concerning or ambiguous immigration policy by providing counseling, peer-to-peer mentoring, and additional staff training. Other work of the task force will include researching the possibility of providing financial aid to undocumented students.
The School Board also passed a resolution to not look into the legal status of students, nor would it provide any information about undocumented students to Immigration and Customs Enforcement without the consent of a parent or guardian or by a subpoena.
The recommendations will be instated as soon as possible, but there are still aspects that need to be worked through, Botchway said.
Botchway defined ambiguous not as a legality but as a feeling brought to the district by at-risk students and families.
“This was because of some changes in immigration policy from the federal government,” he said. “We get that information from our families. They felt there was a concern around immigration policy.”
