Cherokee County’s public school system enrolled four Guatemalan students last month amid a surge of Central American children illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without their parents.
It’s unclear whether the new students are connected to humanitarian crisis on the southwest border. But they identified themselves as refugees when they enrolled in late July, said schools spokeswoman Barbara Jacoby.
All four are studying in Canton, where there is a large Guatemalan population, Jacoby said. Of Cherokee’s 40,400 students, 378 are immigrants.
Dalton and Hall County’s public school systems have also enrolled Central American students in recent months. Dalton school officials said they are planning to spend $253,700 for a special “Newcomer Academy” program to educate the 30 unaccompanied boys and girls from El Salvador and Guatemala who enrolled there last school year, a record number of such children for the 7,695-student system.
The crisis on the border has become a flash point in the congressional debate over immigration and in Georgia’s gubernatorial race. Last month, Gov. Nathan Deal sent an angry letter to President Barack Obama, saying he was shocked to learn the federal government had transferred 1,154 of the children to the care of sponsors in Georgia. Deal complained he had received “little or no information about children for whom we are expected to provide an education and/or other social services.”
Deal’s campaign then called on Democratic opponent Jason Carter to state his position on the issue. A spokesman for Carter’s campaign said “Congress must act quickly to secure our border and fix our broken immigration system.”
Newly updated federal figures show the government has — as of the end of last month — transferred 1,412 unaccompanied Central American children to the care of sponsors in Georgia.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently said the federal government wants to help local school systems that are enrolling these children. His agency has released a report detailing sources of federal funding that could aid them.
“There are potentially lots of places within our big bureaucracy where we can be helpful to districts,” he told reporters last month, “whether it’s money for migrant students, money for homeless students, whether it’s special [education].”
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