School groups condemn Trump family separation policy Presented by Comcast

With help from Caitlin Emma, Mel Leonor and Benjamin Wermund

SCHOOL GROUPS CONDEMN TRUMP FAMILY SEPARATION POLICY, RAISE CONCERNS ABOUT IMMIGRANT CHILDREN IN CUSTODY: Hundreds of children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border remain in the care of the U.S. government, as education groups decry the separation policy and advocates question the Trump administration’s lack of transparency about the care the children are receiving.


— Hundreds of children remain in the care of varying government agencies as parents are detained for prosecution. While most children are first held by the Department of Homeland Security, a 1997 court settlement makes it illegal for the agency to hold on to them in federal prisons for more than 72 hours. Migrant children are then placed in one of dozens of shelters funded by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is housed in the Department of Health and Human Services. (More from POLITICO on that process here.)

— Once in a shelter, migrant children are entitled to an educational assessment within 72 hours and classes in the basic subjects for six hours a day, five days a week, according to Julie Sugarman of the Migration Policy Institute, which has been tracking the situation at the border.

— “We’ve been hearing that the educational assessment might not be happening in that time frame,” said Sugarman. “They are trying to deal with the basic needs … because the system was never set up to do quite this. There is this incredible surge of kids, and younger kids,” than the system is accustomed to dealing with, she said. Sugarman said the educational assessment is “not standardized,” but ideally logs children’s reading levels in their native language, their grade levels and their math skills. “Whatever info they can gather,” she added.

— The head of the Miami area’s school district — the nation’s fourth-largest — took aim at the Trump administration for its “troubling” decision to send as many as 1,000 immigrant children to a nearby detention facility without notifying education officials who say the kids need to be taught under state law. “It is troubling that so many children are being held apart from any contact with their parents or family members and without access to those daily comforts of home,” Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, wrote in a letter on Tuesday to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen that was copied to other Trump administration officials including HHS Secretary Alex Azar and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

— Carvalho said in the letter that district officials had “not received any communication” from either HHS or its Office of Refugee Resettlement about making educational arrangements for children at a Homestead, Fla. facility – where officials blocked on Tuesday also blocked Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and other lawmakers from entering. “We should at least provide these children with the dignity of some connection with caring adults and access to educational services,” Carvalho said. POLITICO Florida’s Marc Caputo has more.

— A spokeswoman for Southwest Key Programs, a nonprofit that runs 26 shelters, including this one housed in an old Walmart, said the children in its care are receiving classroom time with licensed teachers. “There have not been any challenges meeting this requirement since the new [immigration] policy went into effect,” Cindy Casares told POLITICO in an email. Casares did not respond to a request for comment on whether these children were receiving timely assessments to gauge their educational needs.

— Education advocacy groups on Tuesday roundly condemned the family separation policy. The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, which advocates for children with disabilities, said children with disabilities who’ve been separated from their parents are now part of a system that doesn’t allow for full disclosure or understanding of their needs, or the identification of suspected disabilities as required by federal special education law.

— Trauma is also an enormous factor, COPAA said. “Equally as disturbing is the fact that separation is occurring when the research is clear that such forced separation causes complex stress in these young victims,” the group said. “Such toxic stress results in physiological changes in the brain which can disable a child’s ability to learn, alter the physiology of a child’s developing brain, and inhibit the performance of daily activities such as thinking, reading, and learning.”

— The Council of the Great City Schools, which represents large urban school districts, said: “When families are fractured, dysfunctional, or absent, our schools often must serve as surrogate parents — a role that, while necessary, is a weak substitute for the real thing. … Whatever one thinks needs to be done about our borders, nothing justifies the separation of children for any period from their parents and caregivers — or parents and caregivers from their children.”

— College leaders, who have pushed back on much of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, called the separation policy cruel and warned about the harm it may cause children. “The damage for children is especially acute and can interfere not only with mental health and emotional development, but with brain development itself,” University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce, who is a child clinical psychologist by training, said in a statement. “The fact that American tax dollars are being used to knowingly inflict lifelong trauma on children is a stain on our national character.”

— The leaders of Notre Dame, the University of California and others have called on the administration to end the family separation policy. Thousands of college professors signed a letter saying it’s “an extreme human-rights breach” and “government-sanctioned child abuse,” the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.

GOOD WEDNESDAY MORNING AND WELCOME TO MORNING EDUCATION. Drop me a line with your tips and feedback: [email protected] or @mstratford. Share event listings: [email protected]. And follow us on Twitter: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro.

JUDGE EXPANDS ORDER BLOCKING DEVOS PARTIAL LOAN FORGIVENESS POLICY: A federal judge in California is expanding the number of former Corinthian Colleges students who will receive a temporary reprieve on their federal student loans amid an ongoing legal challenge to the Trump administration’s loan discharge policies. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim, who last month blocked Education Secretary Betsy DeVos from carrying out her partial loan forgiveness policy for defrauded borrowers, on Tuesday broadened the scope of her injunction that halts debt collection on certain federal student loans.

— The new order prohibits the Education Department from collecting the student loans of a large swath of former Corinthian students who attended certain programs starting as early as 2010 and apply for loan forgiveness. It applies to Corinthian borrowers who already received only partial forgiveness under the DeVos policy, those with pending applications, and those who submit applications in the future. The reprieve will last “until the Court can determine the proper course of action,” according to the order.

— Kim’s initial order last month appeared to apply only to the handful of former Corinthian students who were named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging the policy. The Education Department has said that it already voluntarily provides borrowers with a forbearance while their fraud claims – known as “borrower defense to repayment” claims – are being processed.

— Before Tuesday’s revised order, the Trump administration had asked Kim to craft a narrower order that only blocked it from collecting the debt of Corinthian students affected by the partial discharge policy. Still, Kim also did not go as far as the legal aid groups bringing the lawsuit had asked. Those groups — Housing & Economic Rights Advocates and Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending — wanted relief for former Corinthian borrowers regardless of whether they actually completed a loan forgiveness application.

— The Trump administration has been weighing its options following the court’s May ruling that DeVos’ new “tiered relief” process for student fraud claims violated a federal privacy law meant to protect how government agencies collect and use individuals’ personal information. The Education Department has said in court filings that it’s still considering an appeal of the ruling as well as the possibility of using different data to calculate the amount of loan forgiveness for defrauded borrowers.

TODAY – HOUSE HEARING ON OCCUPATIONAL LICENSING: The House Committee on Education and the Workforce this morning will hold a hearing to “explore the prevalence of occupational licensing, its effects on economic growth and upward mobility, and what is being done to address the issue within states and across state lines.”

— Student loan debt has emerged as a new front in efforts to overhaul state licensing rules that are seen as overly burdensome. The New York Times reported last year that some 20 states allow for the seizure of licenses from residents who default on their student loans.

— Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last week introduced legislation that would ban that practice – and prevent states from suspending, revoking or denying professional, teaching or driver's licenses for federal student loan borrowers on the grounds that they’re behind on payments. The Protecting Job Opportunities for Borrowers (Protecting JOBs) Act would give states two years to comply and would give borrowers an avenue to file for relief if states do not.

— Today, Reps. Drew Ferguson (R-Ga.) and David Cicilline (D-R.I.) will introduce a companion House bill to coincide with the Education and Workforce Committee hearing.

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT RELEASES MORE DEVOS CALENDARS: The Trump administration, responding to Freedom of Information Act requests, has published Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ calendar for the months of March and April. Here are some of the highlights:

— A meetup with the Bushes in Dallas: DeVos met with former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush during a trip to Dallas in early April. DeVos met with the Bushes at the 43rd president’s library, where she also took a tour and met with the library’s education team, the calendar shows.

— DeVos held meetings with families affected by school shootings: Aside from publicized meetings of the school safety task force, DeVos held several personal meetings with parents who lost children in school shootings. Her calendar lists meetings with Scarlett Lewis, who founded the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement in honor of her son who was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting; Max Schachter, whose son, Alex, was killed in the Parkland, Fla. shooting; and Julie and Andrew Pollack, whose daughter, Meadow, also was killed in the Parkland shooting.

— DeVos also met with a handful of corporate executives, the calendars show: Steve Schwarzman, the CEO of The Blackstone Group; Katherine Lugar, the CEO of American Hotel & Lodging Association; Artie Starrs, the CEO of Pizza Hut; John Venhuizen, the CEO of Ace Hardware; John Mitchell, the president and CEO of IPC-Association Connecting Electronics Industries; and Eric Schmidt, the former executive chairman of Google and its parent company, Alphabet.

REPORT ROLL CALL

— “Inspecting the Inspector General”: The American Enterprise Institute’s Jason D. Delisle and Nat Malkus examine the role that the Education Department’s independent watchdog plays in the development of policy.

— Third Way’s Tamara Hiler and Lanae Erickson Hatalsky are out with a new report on what “No Child Left Behind” can teach higher education.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

— Erica Navarro, the former Education Department budget chief who was reassigned by Secretary Betsy DeVos amid an attempted break-up of the agency’s central budget office, has been named the Department of Agriculture’s new budget director. More here.

SYLLABUS

— Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker touts his record as an “education governor” in a new campaign ad: The Associated Press.

— Judge strikes down rule allowing some New York charter schools to certify their own teachers: Chalkbeat.

— Rally in support of arming teachers planned for Santa Fe, Texas: Houston Chronicle.

— This school was named for a Confederate general. Now, it’s Obama Elementary: The Washington Post.

Follow the Pro Education team: @caitlinzemma ([email protected]), @khefling ([email protected]), @mstratford ([email protected]), @BenjaminEW ([email protected]), @MelLeonor_ ([email protected]) and @JaneNorman ([email protected]).

Follow us on Twitter Jennifer Scholtes @JAscholtes



Michael Stratford @mstratford



Nicole Gaudiano @ngaudiano



Bianca Quilantan @biancaquilan



Juan Perez Jr. @PerezJr