‘Band-Aid Virtual Learning’: How Some Schools Respond When ICE Comes to Town

Multiple Minneapolis-area school districts are temporarily letting students learn virtually as heightened immigration enforcement has sparked widespread fear.

Districts nationwide are increasingly weighing virtual learning as families express concern about the growing presence of federal immigration agents in communities and near schools, according to local news reports and advocates for immigrant students.

It’s one way school officials are trying to address family members’ fears of being detained en route to school and ensure uninterrupted learning, since the Trump administration rescinded a policy memo early last year that designated schools as protected areas from immigration enforcement.

But while virtual learning may serve as a stopgap for some communities, experts caution education leaders to carefully consider the equity and achievement implications.

“It is something that could be temporary, but definitely not permanent,” said Kimberly Valle, a director of programs and partnerships at ImmSchools, a national nonprofit based in Texas that works with K-12 schools to support undocumented students and their families.

Educators must weigh multiple factors

Valle said she has heard from districts in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania where families and educators have called for virtual learning options as fear of immigration enforcement has driven up absenteeism.

District leaders, however, have been hesitant to make that call for several reasons.

Take Minnetonka public schools, about 12 miles west of Minneapolis.

Because Minnesota is an open-enrollment state—meaning students can choose to attend schools outside their home district—many Minnetonka students live in Minneapolis, said Superintendent David Law. Several staff commute from the city, too, he said.

The district also serves many Spanish-speaking students, Law said, and there have been reports of immigration officers within a block of the district’s school buildings.

Still, as neighboring districts including Minneapolis and St. Paul have offered virtual learning, Minnetonka has maintained fully in-person instruction.

To date, there haven’t been any enforcement efforts on campuses, and many families have asked the district to remain open to provide safe, consistent spaces for children during a time of uncertainty and fear, Law said. Attendance has remained relatively steady.

“Academically, if you’re going to take a community in crisis and have those kids stay home a week or two weeks, that is a major impact, and I weigh all those things out,” said Law, who is also president of AASA, The School Superintendents Association.

Before offering temporary virtual learning in response to fears of immigration enforcement, Valle said superintendents must weigh several factors, including:

• The risk of inadvertently identifying families’ immigration status if only a few opt in to a virtual option.
• Staffing capacity to ensure teachers can serve students both in-person and online.
• And, most importantly, the quality of instruction and services during emergency virtual learning.

Emergency virtual learning poses several challenges

Research on remote learning during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic found serious inequities, including lost instructional time, when districts relied on this option for all students.

English learners who require additional language support and students with disabilities missed out on critical services in the years of remote learning, said Esmeralda Alday, the senior director of programs and partnerships at ImmSchools. While most English learners are U.S.-born citizens, many come from immigrant households and may be disproportionately affected by immigration enforcement.

“English learners have linguistic accommodations that should be part of instruction. How do you guarantee those if you’re doing a Band-Aid virtual learning experience in the midst of a crisis?” Alday said. She asked the same regarding meeting students’ individualized education programs.

While virtual learning is “inferior to in-person instruction,” districts that have taken this route likely don’t see a lot of immediate alternatives on hand, said Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education who has studied long-term effects of immigration enforcement on schools.

“It’s a thoughtful, responsive action to undertake, given the circumstances schools in Minnesota and elsewhere are facing,” Dee said. “But I think we don’t want to lose sight of the fact that the policy choices being made around interior immigration enforcement are harming learning and child development along multiple dimensions.”

Past research from Dee and others has linked enforcement activity near schools to lower attendance, achievement loss, and even evidence of anxiety disorders and harmful implications for students’ long-term educational attainment. There’s also concern of enrollment numbers dropping due to persistent fear in communities from immigration raids, Dee added.

Educators face legal questions with virtual learning

Legal barriers further complicate districts’ options.

Education Week contacted the education departments for all 50 states and the District of Columbia this month, asking whether their laws or policies allow districts to switch to or offer virtual learning due to concerns about immigration enforcement. Thirty-two states responded.

Of those, 22 said their state does not prohibit the use of virtual instruction, and an additional eight states said it would be allowed, but with limitations. Many of those limitations are on the number of days or hours of instruction that schools can provide remotely. In Kentucky, for example, districts are limited to 10 days of virtual “nontraditional” instruction per school year.

New Jersey schools can only use remote learning if school building closures for weather or other reasons last longer than three consecutive school days. In Maryland, the governor must declare a state of emergency that would prevent in-person schooling for at least 14 days before schools can shift to virtual instruction.

Two states—Connecticut and Massachusetts—said virtual instruction is not permitted.

But even in states where virtual instruction may be an option, Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, cautions against schools making such an option a long-term solution taken up by only a subset of the student body.

“If you end up with a long-term regime where Latino students are provided, even at their option, remote learning while everybody else gets in-person learning, there’s a clear inequity there,” Saenz said.

Districts turn to alternative strategies

Given these concerns, experts point to alternative strategies districts are already using across the country that help address absences and fear tied to immigration enforcement.

Saenz sees virtual learning as a temporary option that could give districts time to set up better strategies for addressing the root issue: parent and guardian fears of being detained while dropping off or picking up children at school.

Some districts have organized groups of parents who volunteer to drive or walk students to school and back to their neighborhoods, a strategy referred to as safe passages, Valle said.

Sometimes, trusted adults are stationed at school bus stops after local reports that immigration agents have questioned students there or even followed them home, she added.

Alday has also seen some districts offer staggered dropoff and pickup times, allowing some students to arrive or leave early so they can avoid high traffic in front of schools when immigration agents have been spotted nearby.

The key to all these strategies, Valle said, is districts’ flexibility for ensuring all students are safe.

“It’s a lot to consider, and there’s no perfect solution to anything,” Valle said.