Please note: This transcript was automatically generated. We have reviewed it to ensure it reflects the original conversation, but we may not have caught every transcription error.

Chris Saldaña: Hi, everyone. I'm Chris Saldaña, and this is the National Education Policy Center's Talks Education podcast. On this month's podcast, we spoke with Drs. Sophia Rodriguez and Jacob Kirksey.

Professor Rodriguez is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and Sociology of Education. Her research agenda addresses issues related to racial equity, urban education, leadership, and policy, and centralizes minoritized youth voices. Her current longitudinal projects, funded by the Spencer Foundation and the W. T. Grant Foundation, utilize mixed methods and ethnographic designs to investigate how community school partnerships, teachers, leaders, and critical school based personnel promote equity and advocate for immigrant youth.

Professor Kirksey is an assistant professor in the College of Education at Texas Tech University. His research focuses broadly on the intersection of education and public policy to enhance educational and economic outcomes for historically underserved populations. He has published extensively on topics related to student absenteeism, students with disabilities, the ripple effects of immigration enforcement, teacher preparation and effectiveness, And college and workforce trajectories.

In this month's podcast, Dr. Rodriguez and Kirksey discuss the relationship of immigration and education and consider the implications of potential changes to immigration policy proposed by the incoming Trump administration.

So when you think about the relationship between immigration and K 12 education, what are some of the major issues that characterize this relationship?

Sophia Rodriguez: When I think of immigration and education, because of my work, they're deeply intertwined, but I think in the past I didn't always think that. I didn't realize that until I started to obviously do more research on the topic, but I think in terms of the key features, a lot of folks don't think that.

That there's a strong connection or understand the way that immigration policy deeply impacts immigrant youth and their families lives. And I think in my own work, I've studied and, learned a lot about this relationship. And so some of the key features that I think about are the notions of safety and belonging in particular.

And what I mean by that is, from like a policy perspective and a legal perspective, schools are supposed to be safe spaces for immigrant students. So all immigrant children have the right to a K 12 education. regardless of their immigration status. And then other policies and initiatives have also, declared that schools are supposed to be safe spaces and sensitive locations where kids are, immigrant youth and their families are supposed to be protected from threats of immigration enforcement.

And I think understanding that legal and policy, history, and context is really critical for educators because schools are one of the major social institutions that immigrant youth and families obviously attend and come to and look to for support whether that's social services or understanding sort of the political context that they have to navigate.

Jacob Kirksey: Yeah, I couldn't agree more with Sophia, when I think of immigrant immigration and education, I think of the role of the school first and foremost. I think what makes us great right now as a country is that immigrants do have a right to an education according to plier veto, right? And then I think, okay, these individuals are entitled to a good education.

So what role can the school play in ensuring that is happening? And we know that one of the first things that is a priority, both for But also the schools themselves is appropriate language acquisition in a way in which is beneficial for the students. And so I think that is often centered in the conversation around, the role that schools can play in facilitating that.

And you talk about issues. That is an issue, right? Because there is a right and a wrong way to do that. I think of Texas, which had to me a very great approach in the sense that we have prioritized bilingual education programs for a long time. We actually have a law that says if you in a district have 20 or more kids who share the same language in the same grade, you have to offer a bilingual education program.

And what's great with that type of program is It prioritizes shine lights on the assets of a student coming in with their own native language that is not English, but also is capable of continuing to advance themselves in content in a language that is not theirs that they are learning. English as well as their own language.

And so I think when you, when we think about immigration and education, that is just 1 example of how schools can really positively contribute to these kids development. The last thing I think about when I think of immigration education is what we think of when we think of any population that is different, so to speak that it is not the mainstream population that which schools were conceived of, that this is a group of students that were in mind that the current funding system is set up for.

And that's another example. I think of how are we prioritizing inputs, or I'm an economist, so I think of funding. Finance and funding for schools for this population in particular. So in Texas, we have a weighted funding formula where we give schools additional dollars to the base that the state contributes to their students if that student is an English learner.

And so that's just another example of ways that we can recognize the differences that these kids bring with them into the classroom, but also in policy, think about ways we can help be supportive and support the schools that are serving these kids.

Chris Saldaña: You've both already started to go in this direction of talking about what are some of the things that we are doing now.

And I think most folks probably think of the issue of immigration in light of some of the more vitriolic rhetoric that's come out in the last since 2016. Or prior to that, prior to this period where there are just some outright nasty things that have been put forward about immigrants, what kind of job, would you say the U.

S. Was doing? You've both already mentioned Plyler V. Doe. I'm just wondering how could we contextualize the history of immigration and education in the United States? Thinking about the period that we're dealing with now,

Sophia Rodriguez: it's complicated. I think that would be the first thing I say. I think we think of mhm.

This issue because of the way the border, quote unquote, the border crisis, this influx of immigrants coming to the U. S., we think of this as a new issue because that's how the media portrays it. That's how the political discourse portrays things. And in reality that's not the case. In the U.

S., we have a long history of both recruiting immigrant labor to do jobs in the U. S. that folks, as a lot of youth in my research have said that white folks don't want to do. And yet, there's a rhetoric and there's a portrayal of immigrants that they're stealing jobs, and we just know that's not true politically and from a policy perspective.

And I think at the federal level, Immigration policy has not changed much over the last, 50, 60, 70 years, and we can go back and name specific policies. But in that sense, Pyler v. Doe was obviously in the 80s. And I think there were other policies that like the Refugee Act of 1980, you know, the policies we've had toward immigrant groups have always had a political component and a political interest or, critical race theory.

So we'd obviously talk about it as interest convergence. And I think when we've contextualized at the federal level, policies have not always been. Sensitive or supportive to immigrant youth and their families. And so that's one component, I think to further historicize or contextualize the issue.

I think the challenge is that, when we think about training educators educators and school based personnel, like social workers and counselors, those are a lot of the frontline essential folks that kids and their families interact with. And yet, their professionalism and their professional training does not have a component.

People aren't required to take a class on immigration policy. It's often an elective if that, depending on, the professors in these programs. And so we talk a lot about English language learners, and I know Jacob brought up that issue, and it's obviously very important because that's one key Funding.

That's I'm sorry. That's one key component of immigrant students, but not all immigrant students are language learners, right? Just not all immigrant students are undocumented students. And we have to I think, as what is our role as either researchers or policy researchers or educators, even, I think we have to constantly push to really clarify who the populations are we're serving, what are the policy issues that, and that's part of that historicizing and contextualizing work.

But it's a lot, right? Because we also think about, Okay. Educators and school personnel, they're super busy. They're super like tasked with a lot of things. And, teachers are supposed to teach. We sometimes hear, and that's true, but their role is really important in understanding the policy and the history context, because kids are bringing that with them to school.

Jacob Kirksey: Yeah. Prior to, the current political climate, I do feel like there was. space where we were asset oriented, not all the time and not all populations for sure. But there were certainly some spaces where not all immigrants were painted in this broad light as being bad, right? And just thinking about hitting the news today is this new debate over the HB1 visa, right?

Something that we haven't debated. possible bad thing. It's like ever, right? And just like Sophia said like that's been a policy since the fifties, right? And so now we are facing like not only more intense rhetoric, but brand new rhetoric targeting all populations, right? But I do think that we are making, we have made some progress prior to, I think this rhetoric starting.

So Sophia mentioned the role of teachers. could not agree more. Teachers play such a central role in a kid's trajectory, and we know that from decades and decades of research from multiple disciplines. And one key piece that I found in my work in a study I did in California, is teachers who had that exposure to working with immigrant families and engaging with them in and outside of school during their pre service program as they were training to become a teacher, they felt a lot more efficacious as first year teachers when they were there supporting their students, both in the context of their students own anxieties that they were articulating to them due to harsh immigration enforcement and harsh rhetoric, but they also felt like they had more efficacy engaging with families.

So I wish that type of preparation was happening more at scale because we know it's not, but it is a bright spot that I think is really important to show that. Things can like we, there are ways that we can support students. There are ways that we can support immigrant families. I also think, we were as a nation, very much, thinking about immigrants as being part of our community, right?

Again, this isn't everywhere, but we hear a lot about community when it comes to talking about immigrant families, So back in the second term under the President Obama administration, we did see more formalized articulations of schools being safe spaces where ICE won't come on to school grounds.

President Obama actually issued the first Dear Colleagues letter saying that. Of course, that very quickly went away. But there were some things happening, and even though it didn't pass the DREAM Act is another good example. There was a lot of political momentum behind this. We really thought that this might be the first major reform we got, and in a bipartisan way, and it just didn't get there.

Immigration policy has shown time and time again to be one of the most contentious and hardest things to change. But then we had the momentum, and unfortunately now, I don't think we have that same type of momentum. Yeah, and I just wanted to add, I think, I started my kind of career during, in 2012, I was doing my field work with Latino immigrant activists in Chicago and Jacob, you just made me remember that because it feels like a million years ago, but I think that sort of momentum and that sense of community, I just want to echo that, how important that is because, These communities are working at the local level.

Sophia Rodriguez: There's so many groups. I've even just in the past couple of weeks, since the election, I've been on the phone with groups in Chicago and Arizona and Indiana, and in a lot of places where security and safety, both emotionally and physically, is under threat, I think and yet, sorry, I was a doomsday person, but I think I just want to say.

I agree with Jacob that there is a lot of local work even if the big movements like in 2012 leading up to DAPA, I think those might not be as big right now, but I do agree that there's local advocacy happening. And I think now more than ever just the past couple of weeks, I've been writing a lot about school districts publicly saying in Chicago and LA, right?

They're like, we are going to protect our students. The governor in Chicago was like, if he's going to come for my people, he's got to go through me. I think we, we're seeing that local level rallying around communities, but it's, I, my sense through the conversations I've had with organizers and district folk is there still is fear.

There's a very real threat, I think, and yet, Again, it's like, how can we plan? How can we prepare? And so I think having that historical knowledge, having that policy knowledge and supporting and not just throwing it on teachers or educators, right? You should know this or you should do this, but really figuring out systemic ways to support educators, because again, they're going to be the people interacting often in the first case with kids.

So I think supporting them in that, Okay. Knowledge building and knowledge sharing and resource sharing that I'm seeing across many districts is going to be really critical.

Chris Saldaña: There's a few things that you both mentioned that I want to touch on. One is The idea of complex identities existing within the immigrant community.

It seems like now the rhetoric has been to lump together a large group of people who are in fact very diverse and come from very different places with very different experiences and have very different circumstances. So when you both think about. the immigrant community of students, of families, of communities really around the country who are now dealing with this rhetoric, going to have to contend with these policies.

What kinds of unique challenges do they face? You mentioned that sometimes teachers don't always know what to do or feel like it's a moment of crisis. What are some of the differences that exist within the immigrant community that you want folks to know about and what are some of the challenges that they face?

Jacob Kirksey: I would say first and foremost that I, I do think of community when I think of immigrants, but I think of communities, right? I think that it is a highly localized phenomenon on, the backgrounds of individuals who are coming together, their understandings of their local, their state, the national context.

But also I want to draw attention to their, our students. Who were born in the United States who don't understand their own status, right? I think that's a big part of this, too, is that a lot of the rhetoric we hear and the issues that we've been talking about are affecting those students, too.

And I think a lot of that does come from this, what rhetoric can do in terms of creating ripple effects of fear, misunderstandings, making it a lot more complicated for parents to be parents. And, have their students hone in and focus on what they need to be doing, like going to school, getting the education they deserve and whatnot.

And when I think of immigrants in that way, I'm also thinking about, their peers and their peers, interactions with them, the communities that they are building and ways in which. We've seen some of that unfortunately deteriorate or there be attempts to draw wedges in between. But like you said, I think it's a mistake to paint the immigrant population in the United States as this complete homogeneous thing.

We know that socioeconomic status is a big interaction when it comes to people from immigrant backgrounds. There are immigrants here who come from very wealthy backgrounds, right? And that they are entirely different group compared to, refugees who are fleeing abductions. dangerous, violent country.

There's also immigrants coming who, don't speak English or don't speak English well, but they don't speak Spanish either. I think it's also this big conception, right? Everyone's coming from Mexico or Latin America, and that's not the case either. So that diversity is an asset. But I also think it creates a more nuanced, picture for us to really dig into and ideally with our research, with our own interactions and folks we support the broader set of communities that are forming here.

Sophia Rodriguez: Yeah, I agree. I think the diversity of immigrant groups is really critical. And, I think a lot of to understand, and I think a lot of my work over the past several years has been to constantly, again, clarify what are these identities? Who are these groups? Because again, even though there might be a sense of community, a sense of solidarity, which I found in my work among different immigrant groups and That sort of sense of belonging can come from that.

But once you create communities, you also, there's always a process of boundary making also. And I think it's just really important that, if kids are feeling a sense of connectedness because they're language learners, which I've found in my work there's a sense of solidarity and safety and belonging in it.

I've heard time and kids say Oh, we're all in the same boat. We're navigating being here. We're speak, we're not, we're learning English together. We feel safe in our language learning classrooms because other people are like us. There is that sense of belonging, I think because of those similarities.

But it's really nuanced and it's really complex. And we also have to understand that doesn't mean they're the same or that they're coming from the same places or they're having the same experiences. And like Jacob was saying I think the other piece of the identity stuff from what I've come to understand through my work is that with different identities, kids are also bringing different experiences and also differential opportunities and differential access to resources, right?

If kids are labeled refugee, that's a different status than being undocumented or unaccompanied even. And so as an educator and as a researcher, I think we have to make sure that, again, we're clarifying. A lot of my work lately has really been around Terminology, just like what do these terms mean? There's a really great book called Fragile Families by Naomi Glenlove and Rodriguez.

I think it was like 2014. And she did a study of kids in San Diego and on the Mexican border. And I think it was a lot around like the child welfare system and how, kids get labeled based on if they're detained or if they're in immigration centers and whether or not they become, labeled as unaccompanied or labeled as refugee for instance, like that is often a very discretionary process.

And so with that comes access to resources or not. And so again, understanding statuses, understanding terms. And I think another kind of key piece of this in my work, I've started to talk to different groups in child welfare systems, as well as in educational systems, because those groups don't often talk to each other.

And that is where kids identities and experiences can get lost, I think. And so again, ensuring that any sort of system that immigrant families and youth are interacting with are in communication with each other to understand those identities, those labels. And that's like the benign answer, right?

We're not even talking about the racialization, the discrimination that happens, rampantly Immigrants are not a racial group, but they're highly racialized, right? It's a process of othering that they under undergo when they come into the U. S. And so I think, at best, we can clarify terms and make sure we understand policies and understand, access to resources that come with legal status.

But at worst, we also have to be prepared for processes of racialization and discrimination that's also happening because that can fix people into certain ways of accessing or not accessing resources. And then the other thing, last thing I was going to say along with how schools and different actors and schools can do and offer support.

There's so much discretionary advocacy work happening. And I think that's something even Jacob and I have worked on together. We find that because there isn't. solid training and solid knowledge building in schools about immigration policy and the history of immigration and how it impacts young people and their families.

Often you'll get that social worker that's doing a lot and understanding the complexity of identities and the complexity of family experience. But maybe, the teacher isn't, or maybe the principal doesn't know that stuff, or, any combination of that. And that's why in my work, I've been trying to push this sort of systemic, district level response to these issues, because I think people need to be talking to each other and on the same page to dispel these myths that we've been talking about around identity racial, ethnic, socioeconomic status.

Chris Saldaña: Often the focus is on how we will support students which is an important part of the conversation. But recently there's been this rhetoric and I think it's been around for a long time, but more recently it's been heightened, is this rhetoric that immigrants and immigrant communities are taking.

It's all about taking. They're taking resources, they're taking opportunities, they're taking anything, that folks can think of. I'm curious. In your work with students with families with communities how have you found that immigrant families? And students are contributing to to educational communities, to schools, to school districts, to even state level policies that dispel this myth.

Jacob Kirksey: One thing that I think surprises a lot of folks who aren't necessarily directly in this work is that, immigrant students outperform native born students across the board when it comes to academics and when they get to college, right? And the idea that immigrant students in particular are taking any sort of resources from the system is just could not be more patently false because they're not only perhaps even getting less of the kind of direct mainstream support because we know that, a lot of that just passes over because it isn't targeted.

At the, the challenges and needs that immigrant students need to have addressed, be successful. They are addressing those challenges themselves, and then they're going above and beyond and, Positively contributing to the economy by getting that post secondary credential or, going in to high school, getting that certificate while you're there and having a very successful kind of labor market entry.

In Texas, we talk a lot about the labor market, the economics, and I don't mean to always draw that as the focus for this conversation, but it is something that I hear a lot of policymakers talk about. And to me, just like you said, if we're going to talk What immigrants are quote unquote taking economically.

I think it's important to spend that on his head and really talk about the realities of what is happening. We also know that parents of immigrant families from lots of research have higher expectations for their students to be successful in school. And in some of my work, I found that. If students needed disability support services, for example, we found that, immigrant families were more involved in the home, but they also became more involved with school based forms of involvement, which is what we want when we, just in the little bit of my work that looks at students with disabilities.

We want those families to come to school and to be engaged as part of that process. That's what the individualized education program is partly designed to do. And I think we see a lot of coming from these families that desire to do well, clear evidence that, immigrant students are doing well and are positively contributing based on, the inputs that we're able to give them.

Sophia Rodriguez: I love the economic perspective, Jacob. Because I think it's so critical. I'm more the sociological perspective. So I'm thinking a lot about like how families are feeling and that sense of community and belonging, I think, at more local levels. But I think that connection for me is really important to also hear and continue to push forward.

I guess I would just That I don't really like the question. I don't like this notion of contribution. Because I think automatically you're, I don't know, I don't know what that's supposed to do or mean, but because that's the policy rhetoric and the political rhetoric, I think I get why we're asking that question because it gives us the opportunity to clarify a right answer.

But so I just, I'm a little troubled by the question, but I think a lot of what I've done work now for almost 15 years and I've listened to hundreds of immigrant youth and their families talk about their experience and talk about what they're giving and getting, for lack of a better phrase, and I think the richness of their experience we expect so much of young people, I think, in general, but, kids are so resourceful and so resilient.

Given what they may have been through, whether they've come as refugee students and fleed violence political, violence or actual civil strife I think that sense of resilience that they bring and that sense of, I'm always amazed over the hundreds of interviews I've done with young people that they really do see this country as offering a better life.

And so they want to it. Engage in school and be successful and give back to their family and their community. I think that's another thing I constantly hear is they want to, have a better opportunity because of what was sacrificed for them to be here. And that narrative is really strong, I think, in the immigrant community.

But I think within that, just. They're being here, their diversity of experience and identities, like that is an asset. That is a contribution. Those are some of the things that our country was supposedly founded on, so I think we have to remember that just because groups are different and, we want to categorize and homogenize them because it's easier, right?

It helps us make sense of the world. And by us, people with privilege or people who might not have to navigate systems in new ways the way that immigrant youth and families do. But I think also understanding that their language diversity, their cultural diversity, their racial ethnic diversity, their class based identities and diversity, all of that is a contribution in and of itself.

I don't know that they have to justify that. So that's one thing, I guess the other thing I just wanted to note, I was reading a lot recently because of the Latino vote in the last election. And I think that was a wake up call for a lot of people that, oh, Latinos might be different, like that some might vote in different ways, right?

They don't all have the same experience and they don't all have the same sense of, access to resources or understanding of the context that they're in. And again, I think that's an opportunity, right? I think for the Democratic Party, it was a missed opportunity, but I think for us now, it's an opportunity to really understand that groups are different.

People are bringing different experiences and different views. And helping people understand and talk with, to each other within communities is something that we have to think about going forward. And last thing I would say, because this is always a myth, I think that we have to dispel is that immigrants again, not all.

immigrants are undocumented, not all of immigrants are from Central or South America and also they pay taxes, whether they're undocumented or documented. So I think that is a major contribution that people often overlook. So this narrative of stealing jobs, again, I would counter that they're doing jobs that either they're being recruited to do because other white privileged folks don't want to do them or they're, Struggling like horse poop, like those are the jobs that they're quote unquote stealing from us here in the country.

So I just think we have to really have a reality check about what even are those perceptions of these groups. And then also in local communities, like in the meatpacking district in the meatpacking industry in the South, like those are places that are run on immigrant labor. And corporations are benefiting from that labor and yet criminalizing and villainizing these groups through policy and political rhetoric.

So again, I think it's just. Our opportunity to interrupt that negative discourse and that negative connotation of stealing or, being a bad immigrant in our country, because I think it's nonsense.

Jacob Kirksey: And one important statistic to layer on to what Sophia just said is immigrant origin folks in this country are way less likely to commit crime and interact with the criminal justice system, which is very expensive.

I just think, to Sophia's point it could, there's so many misconceptions around this taking piece that is very much a strategy within the rhetoric, but just, not only the data don't support the data, it's the exact opposite.

Chris Saldaña: I want to give you both a chance to speak to the rhetoric and the policy proposals of the incoming administration, and I want to start with the rhetoric.

Most folks who maybe support the incoming administration might argue that, the rhetoric hasn't named students. It's not talking about students. There's often this line like there are good immigrants, there are bad immigrants. We're only talking about the bad immigrants. An extension of that would be to say we're not actually talking about students.

What, from your work, do you, have you learned about how this kind of rhetoric, this criminalization, this racialization of immigrants, these claims about mass deportation, what kind of impact does that have on kids and does that have on public education?

Jacob Kirksey: We mentioned earlier sensitive locations and.

Immigrant agents not, or immigration agents not coming to schools, churches and there should be spaces where folks feel safe. But Trump has already said in December that the plan is to do away with that. And so while we're not saying immigrant kids, we effectively are. Talking about like schools and the immigrants attending those schools.

They're very much part of this administration strategy. I get deeply troubled when I think about the rhetoric and it goes back to that piece that I was talking about earlier. 1 of my 1st 4 years into this work was working in a research practice partnership with a school district that has a very large Migrant immigrant population and community doesn't even begin to describe this city.

And one of the ways that we got involved with them and trying to understand these very bizarre patterns of absences that were happening and looking deeper. It was not a surprise to anyone that we saw these directly correspond to ice raids that were in the community, highly publicized on local English, Spanish radio and newspapers.

And so part of the reason I think about the rhetoric piece to that is 1 of the stories that 1 of the district leaders brought in to 1 of the 1st meetings we had about this and said, yeah, sorry, I was just dealing with this issue where on school spirit day some of the white students at the high school dressed up as the wall.

And thinking about how rhetoric not only is directly impacting a lot of immigrant families, but is having these spillover effects and legitimizing or normalizing behaviors that other kids are seeing. On TV, right? Or they're hearing from their families. And that is chilling to me because it won't surprise you that, I've done a lot of work in this space showing that the direct effects of deportations themselves have drastic educational consequences for students.

You're more likely to miss school. You're less likely to do academically on English and math assessments. You're more likely to feel a sense, a lack of sense of belonging. bullying going on in your school, teachers not or administrators not having the same expectations of rule following for you as you do others.

There's lots of evidence that points to those educational consequences, but there's even more evidence pointing to some of the mental health consequences. We see a lot, particularly from scholars in public health, showing the anxieties that this creates not only for the students, but for their mothers.

We have some recent work that we're working on that's come out that talks about these direct effects extending into the long run. I have a study that shows that, we see actual declines in wages for the small community of kids where a third of the community was deported in one raid back in 2006, and tracing those kids who were able to stay today.

You look at their outcomes in the workforce and you see demonstrably lower wages for those kids that we are able to isolate as being impacted by that rate directly. And that's because in that same study, we found that these kids are less likely to go on and get a bachelor's degree, less likely to go on and get any form of post secondary credential.

They're less likely to apply to college in the first place. They're less likely to apply for financial aid. It creates just a host of problems that, when you think of your average kid, so to speak, in school where they're not having to necessarily think about working during high school to support the family, they're not having to think about how do I navigate this brand new process of applying for college?

Oh, but then while also think about the external stressors that are happening to my family, the stressors I'm hearing about and experiencing at school, I think the rhetoric just could not be more dangerous. And then alongside that, we're seeing the corresponding actions from the federal administration and new partnerships that the federal administration has been making locally to be able to enforce a lot of these harsh immigrant actions.

Sophia Rodriguez: Yeah, I think similarly in the past, especially in the past couple of months I'm also working with school districts in the Northeast and the Mid Atlantic around some of the issues they're facing and I've done I can speak more to the kind of the social, emotional, mental health component too, and I think the fears are both legitimate and also Full of uncertainty, which creates this constant feeling of anxiety.

And I think the absenteeism that Jacob was mentioning is something and also a lack of understanding about what resources that immigrant families can access. I think that's something that's confusing with all of the rhetoric. I think school districts are. After the election in particular, we're panicking.

What do we do? How can we support students? And a lot of what's happening in my work right now that I'm seeing is that families are trying to make plans and community based organizations and school districts that I work with who are partner in partnership, are helping really individual level families, make sure they have a plan if these threats actually become reality around mass deportation.

I think personally I didn't really know what to think with the election. I hear the rhetoric, but then I also see this sort of, I think the danger with the incoming administration is, on the one hand, there's a lot of rhetoric, there's a lot of threats but there's also a lot of not follow through, which was what happened in 2016, but I think the danger is that we don't know, because he's a loose cannon in my view, and so anything, is possible and I think families are very anxious and, Operating under that fear, but at the same time, districts and community based organizations are trying to support the planning process of that.

So what does it mean? We had a fifth grader in one of the schools that I work with. I was there a couple weeks ago. They like, What if I go home and my mom's gone, and the teacher was like, what do I do? This kid said this, and I think it's yeah, that's horrible.

And it's awful. And we have to support emotionally, but we also want to help that family have a plan. Who's going to, what's the emergency contact list, which is the communication tree. So a lot of what I've been doing with my district partners is creating that sort of like safety protocol or that inventory list of action.

Cause that's really what we can do right now. In case these threats. Come through I think the larger sort of issues that Jacob was, pointing out, I obviously agree with and have seen in my own work, too. But, I think across the board kids in my current research, I've now surveyed over 3400 kids that are.

Immigrant origin or have parents who were born outside of the US. And it's the same across the board that those are the groups that feel less sense of belonging. Those are the groups that feel more threat in communities that are more likely to be discriminated against than their white peers and non immigrant peers.

So I'm finding that sense of belonging to be lower at the community level because of these immigration issues, these immigration enforcement issues. And that work started, three years ago. So I think these patterns we're seeing are, pretty consistent despite this new quote unquote, I'll say rhetoric and sense of threat.

Being an immigrant in this country has always been a precarious position. So depending on how bad or worse it is, I think we're seeing a little bit right now worse rhetoric in many ways, but and that's also why we see this narrative of good and bad immigrant happening because immigrants are like, wait, I don't want to be associated with that too.

So he's been really successful in creating this within immigrant group sort of positioning and differentiating, which is also very frightening. But again, I think at the local level, the impact of. Whatever threats are to come. My biggest worry is I, over the past several years, I've always said no Plyler, they have a right to go to school.

But if that's overturned, which we've seen our Supreme court make up change over the past several years, because of him, like all of a sudden, those things that I personally thought were far fetched or crazy, now they're getting a little bit more scary to me personally. But again, I think even though there could be a, an ice threat at a school God knows what could happen, but schools also have the right to deny ICE into the school, even with all of the threats.

So I think we have to remember that, and that's the work I've been doing too, those safety protocols, making sure educators and front office staff at school at K 12 locations are trained in Know Your Rights, are trained in we're doing a lot of scripting right now with educators and school based personnel to make sure they know what they can say and, that they can, Ask an ice agent for a badge number that they can ask for a judge signed order before they allow them in the school and they don't have to allow them in the school.

Again, we just have to make sure that our school based folks are really educated on, how to handle these potential situations, whatever they may be. And we hope that they won't come to this. But because at this point, we don't know, I think it's just important to be ready. And be prepared and support schools and educators as best we can in that effort.

Chris Saldaña: Sophia, you've already started to go in this direction, but I want to ask both of you, even though this is a to your point, Sophia, a constantly evolving issue, one that it's not easily where folks, Can't easily be prepared for, this is the thing that's going to happen. It can be a multitude of things.

What recommendations would you give to listeners, whether they're, a local or state level policymaker trying to think about how to respond to federal policies or the federal administration to practitioners in schools or even to Children and families, what would you tell them?

Okay, here are the things that you absolutely do need to know, even though a million things can happen. Here are the one or two or three things that we think, you got it. You got to be thinking about right now.

Sophia Rodriguez: I think First and foremost, there needs to be a family plan, and there should be a school safety plan and that what I mean by that is, and this can come from a couple different directions, I work with school districts that are heavily equipped and heavily aware, Chicago public schools, for instance, created this work back in 2016.

And, I think other districts are, The danger is if there's less population of immigrants, they're like, oh, this might not be an issue. And it's also sensitive because we don't ask kids about their immigration status. That's actually not something schools do or should be doing.

And so that element of disclosure about status and knowing, what the situation is within the family is also sensitive. So you want to protect families, but you also don't want to You know, make visible these things that may not be. And I think Jacob said this earlier. Some kids don't even know their status also.

So I think we also have to remember that, but at the very least, what I'm seeing both from nonprofits who are partnering with school districts. So again, if a principal or a superintendent is what do I do? What sort of immigrant rights groups. In the city level, or, if it's I know I work with a couple districts that are more suburban so they're connecting with nonprofits in bigger cities nearby, that are doing some of this immigrant justice work.

Those are what I'm seeing are like really critical right now, because a lot of nonprofits, especially immigrants urban organizations have plans in place and are actually doing that labor to support schools and districts. Whatever partnerships, you can leverage within your local community I think that's probably.

What I'm seeing to be one of the most important things and then again at the school level or at the district level having a response a safety plan for if ice comes to school. What are we doing? What are we saying? We can deny their entry knowing what sort of ice or law enforcement cooperations might exist at the local level 287G.

That's a program that Allows ice to cooperate with local law enforcement. So knowing what policies might exist in local communities, I think, are going to be really important because, again, regardless of what's being threatened at the federal level, all of this could or will be carried out at the local level.

So I think knowing the community, the policies. The advocates who are those groups and how can people come together, I think, are, should be the work that's happening now.

Jacob Kirksey: Yeah, I agree with all of that. I think, in this work, it becomes very difficult because we know that with political rhetoric, it, political rhetoric is a product of politics, right?

And when something is a political issue, that means inherently there is lots of space for just. Ignorance of any rational recommendation, right? So as people who are researchers and we were driven by evidence, it's hard to ask about some of these, recommendations when we know that a lot of the levels in which these decisions are being made are not responsive to evidence.

They're responsive to political ambitions and what's going to, build a coalition to ensure, that they maintain power. But I will say, at the local level. Particularly with school districts, I have seen a lot of asset minded educators who care deeply about the immigrant students that their districts are serving, this passion that those kids deserve.

In education, those kids deserve the services and the additional support. We work with several research practice partners across West Texas. And many of them have expressed a desire for us to look at specific issues relevant to maybe not specific immigrant kids, but populations that we know a lot of immigrant families fall into.

merchant bilingual programs, but also some of their You know newcomer groups of students ways in which that they are engaging or not engaging and so I think we leveraged that. I think we, we, like Sophia mentioned, connect to these folks with community partners that are doing this work and are really involved with ensuring that everyone's on the same page.

I, I will say my recommendations just cause I think Sophia covered so much important, almost like step one, this is like what we need to be doing. I try to think about. Okay, what can we recommend in policy that may not be, to the average eye, a direct support for immigrant students, but we'll have, those spillover consequences in a positive way to support them.

Because when you think about a kid, can't come to school or isn't coming to school and that's tied to an ICE raid or an arrest. You're not going to say we got to find ways to get kids in school more. That's not the issue. It's not the same thing as having a broader issue with absenteeism.

It's about, okay, so what do we, going back to the, how we started this podcast, what do we do knowing that school is often at the center of communities? What do we do now, knowing that there is this new gap or potential for gap for some of our students. So I think about ways that one, we can ensure that our practitioners are aware of unintended consequences that can happen, for example, in absenteeism and truancy.

If students can't come to school, right? If there's no kind of acknowledging that those policies should be revisited or discretion imposed and how we're treating. Something as simple as an absence, then those unintended consequences come through. And unfortunately, the populations that we need to be supporting the most are the ones that are reaping a lot of the negative consequences.

So first and foremost, revisiting those things, ensuring that the kids who are experiencing these outcomes that we know from evidence are likely to happen aren't being further disenfranchised. But I also think about, During the pandemic, we learned a lot about how we can do things differently in schools, and I think that is an opportunity for us to think about this as well.

So thinking about, we know, I know in some of my work in times of heightened enforcement, we see a lot of immigrant students in high school into the workforce and try to maintain their education and graduate high school. We know that is not something that we can say, right? Don't do this, even though we do know that working during high school tends to correspond to a lower likelihood of going on to post secondary.

What if we were thinking about how can we fill some of those same high school graduation requirements with work based learning opportunities, with connections to local industry and partners, right? I think, again, going back to, I think there is a lot of recognition at the local level that we value our immigrant communities.

and have connections with them. Schools are part of that, and the way that we can continue to make school or have schools forge some of those partnerships, that then rethinks a lot about the traditional requirements we have of students really engaged, meets these families and these students where they are.

And that's something that I think can really move the needle on, shaping some of the positive outcomes for kids.

Thank you, Dr. Rodriguez and Dr. Kirksey for being on this month's podcast. As always, we hope you're safe and healthy. And remember for the latest analysis on education policy, you should subscribe to the NEPC newsletter at nepc.colorado.edu