For some students, a return to school comes with the return of potential worries about immigration, especially as the Trump Administration announces an immigration crackdown in Massachusetts. In Lowell, where the student body is nearly 80% non-white, it’s a conversation that’s been ongoing. GBH’s Morning Edition spoke with Lowell Public Schools Superintendent Liam Skinner about how the school district is preparing for the presence of Immigration Customs Enforcement agents in their community. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Mark Herz: Tell us about the diversity of your district and what’s within that diversity.
Liam Skinner: We have a wonderfully diverse district. We have families that speak 70 different languages in Lowell. We have large Latino and Cambodian communities, a lot of Brazilian and African communities. We’re very well represented. It’s like a mini global community in Lowell. We celebrate the diversity that we have and we celebrate it in our community, in our city, and in our schools.
Herz: Are you concerned about ICE raids affecting your students and their families?
Skinner: Yes, I am but not necessarily day-to-day. I’m sure families are worried about it day-today. When we hear about new escalating raids or when ICE vehicles are spotted in the city, our tension goes up and it does among our community members. We feel very protective of our students in particular and their families. I believe we have done a good job of assuring them and providing them with reassurance that their students will be safe in schools.
Herz: The state superintendent of education, Patrick Tutwiler, recently said that while there may not be a direct data-driven correlation that he can point to, that he suspects that ICE raids may be affecting absenteeism. I’m wondering what your perspective is on that in your district.
Skinner: We worry about that as well. We don’t have direct evidence of it or not very much. I recall a principal talking about a group that was going on a field trip to Boston one day and noticing several students were missing from that group, that classroom, and making an assumption that it had something to do with ICE and immigration but we don’t had direct evidence of it, and in general, our student attendance is pretty good.
Herz: When you were telling us about the great diversity of your district, over 70 languages, you said, what kind of needs do those students and families bring to the classrooms and how do you meet those needs?
Skinner: Some students don’t speak English as a first language and that’s a very obvious one, but there are others. Their families sometimes are the least secure in their living quarters. There’s a lot of mobility among that group of folks. They also face sometimes, lack of security in their jobs or just outright unemployment. And so there are a lot of needs among that group of students, much of it coming from family instability. But again, our schools are aware, tend to work well with families and certainly try to look out for students who may have anxiety or have perhaps even traumas in their background.
Herz: The great diversity of your school district means you have a lot of very specific needs in terms of educators and what they need in the classroom, and I understand that you have a program to recruit and or develop more of those educators, is that right?
Skinner: Yes, Mark. We have a couple of things going on in that area. We believe that we need to develop and help our paraprofessional cohort to grow and support them to become teachers. So we have some critical need areas, for instance, what we call sub-separate special education programs. These are programs for students with severe physical and mental disabilities. Students with autism needs. And so there are sub-separate classrooms for those that are very difficult to find qualified teachers for. Some of the paraprofessionals that work in those programs are really wonderful and we think that we can support them to become teachers in the future. So we work with the local community college, Middlesex Community College, which now offers free programming for folks to get their coursework towards an associate’s degree. And then we’re also working at the moment with UMass Lowell, supported by a grant called RTAP, Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program. We’re enrolling some of our paraprofessionals in that program where they become apprentices to teachers and get their qualifications in that way. If we’re successful with this, and we believe we will be, we will develop a really strong cohort of teachers in a much needed area. And critically, we’ll also diversify our teaching staff because our paraprofessional cohort is much more diverse than the teacher cohort is at this time.
Herz: You were an immigrant once almost 30 years ago, what does it mean for you to be an immigrant yourself in a school district so full of immigrants?
Skinner: Yeah, well, I have mixed feelings about that because, yes, I’m an immigrant and I do come from a humble background and so forth, but I had a lot of advantages that some of our immigrants today don’t have. I came at a time when I was not hunted down by ICE. I am white and I believe I had some privileges that some folks don’t benefit from today in our schools. But yes, it makes me determined, Mark, to see to the needs of these people, the folks who are coming from poverty and have insecure lives, then we want to take good care of them and we want to prepare students to have a successful future. So we’re more determined to care for them and provide them a really rigorous education so that they have futures of productive and happy lives.
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