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Fear of ICE grips Pittsburgh Public Schools classrooms, impacting attendance

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Here's a bullshit story from Jillian Forstadt, she can be 
reached at jforstadt@wesa.fm.

If you are in the country legally and comply with law officers,
there is nothing to fear.  

Escalating federal immigrant raids from Minneapolis to Oakmont have set
students, families and educators in the Pittsburgh region on edge. 

Rumors of an ICE agent approaching Taylor Allderdice High School’s
campus in Squirrel Hill last week had students and teachers on high
alert. 

On Friday, about half of the students Joseph Papa, an English language
development teacher, works with at Faison K-5 in Homewood were absent
amid rumors of immigration enforcement agents in the neighborhood. 

“And the thing is that not all families are always comfortable sharing
the reason that they're keeping their child at home is because of these
fears,” Papa said. “They're worried about disclosing information, which
is understandable. 

“And so they might say that the child is being kept home because of
sickness, when in reality it's because of other fears and other concerns
about what's going on with the immigration raid.” 

City school board members unanimously passed a resolution in 2017
barring ICE agents from entering PPS buildings without clearance from
the district’s legal department and superintendent. 

And while federal guidance previously restricted Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agents from acting on or near school grounds, the Trump
administration rescinded that guidance last year. ICE encounters have
since been reported at schools in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Chicago. 

In Idaho and California, parents have been detained after dropping off
their children at school. Jose Flores, who was released from ICE custody
over the weekend, was getting his eight-year-old daughter ready for
school in the Pittsburgh suburb of Oakmont last month when he was
detained. 

“As a teacher, what I think about always is, if a child is in that
constant state of fear and experiencing that, their ability to learn is
compromised,” Papa said. “A kid can't learn to their fullest potential
when all day long they're thinking about, what would happen if I don't
see my mom and dad when I go home tonight?” 

Teachers, parents strategize
Roughly one in 10 of Pittsburgh Public Schools’ nearly 18,000 students
are English language learners, according to district data from October. 

At Allderdice High School, the English language learner population has
grown by more than 50% over the past three school years. 

The rumors circulating around the school community last week were false,
according to district spokesperson Ebony Pugh. She said a community
member visited the school to ask if ICE was present, leading to concern
that ICE was there, which was not the case. 

But social studies teacher Traci Castro said the chain of events has
prompted some Allderdice teachers to strategize ways to protect students
and respond to their needs proactively. On Friday, nearly a dozen
teachers gathered in a colleague’s classroom to begin brainstorming
their response. 

“I know some people are interested in doing training, like the legal
training stuff,” Castro said. “I know someone put up posters on the
walls to say to know your rights.” 

“I could speak for myself and several of my colleagues: people are very
angry, worried, infuriated, horrified,” she continued. 

Parents and educators have also convened on the messaging app Signal to
alert each other to suspected ICE sightings and plan their response. 

Recent guidance from Pennsylvania’s Department of Education encourages
districts to ensure that their policies maintain student privacy,
establish policies and procedures in the event a student’s parent is
detained or deported, and designate a point person who will interact
with immigration enforcement personnel. 

Attorneys with Weiss Burkardt Kramer, a law firm that represents more
than a dozen school districts throughout the region, issued guidance
last year with steps educators should take in the event ICE approaches
their school. That includes calling their district’s legal department,
sharing any judicial warrant, court order, or subpoena the agent
presents, and then alerting the superintendent and families involved. 

But federal officials are now telling ICE agents they have broader
powers to arrest people without a judge’s warrant, which conflicts with
that advice. 

Castro said that justifies more immediate action from school districts.

“There should be more proactive stuff and [we should] not wait for ICE
to come around our school because the potential exists,” Castro said.
“Squirrel Hill…it's a very diverse area.” 

“I think we should be more on the lookout and reach out to the community
more,” she added. 

Attendance impacts felt, but “not yet a trend.”
During a public hearing last year, Brashear High School teacher Kim
Daelhousen said Spanish-speaking students in her English language
development classes were already on edge, chatting nervously about the
specter of deportation. 

“That’s where we are right now,” she told board members at the time.

In California’s Central Valley, these fears translated to a 22% increase
in daily student absences, according to one Stanford study. Student
absences reported by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Schools in North
Carolina nearly tripled two days after Border Patrol agents arrived
there this fall. 

Pittsburgh, unlike these areas, has not seen a large-scale immigration
enforcement action. City schools have only seen slightly elevated rates
of absence, according to James Fogarty with A+ Schools. 

“And so it's hard for me to say whether that's a function of ICE
enforcement or just the fact that we had a huge amount of snow days just
last week,” said Fogarty, whose organization monitors student attendance
data. 

But Fogarty noted there have been some notable increases in absenteeism
at schools in the district with large English language learner
populations. Districtwide, chronic absence rates among these students
are up 4% compared to this time last year. 

Chronic absence rates for Latino students in the district have jumped by
close to 5%. Students are considered chronically absent when they miss
10% or more days of school. 

Research shows missing large amounts of school is a leading indicator of
whether a student is likely to read proficiently by third grade or
graduate from high school, especially in low-income households. 

Papa, who works with students at three schools in Pittsburgh’s East End,
said these absences are becoming more and more noticeable to the
district’s English language development staff and other teachers at PPS. 

He said it’s also making educators’ jobs more difficult as they work to
keep students engaged in the classroom. 

“And that's not to ask for any sympathy or anything like that,” Papa
said. “But it's just to know that there are ways that we've learned to
do these things, and they're just not sufficient because of how much
fear is present in these communities right now.” 

He says this tension has put a strain on the whole school community —
not just his English-learning students. 

https://www.wesa.fm/education/2026-02-12/immigration-enforcement-fears-pi
ttsburgh-schools 

Democrats are teaching children that it is okay to illegally invade a 
country and steal from the native citizens.

Of course, that's exactly what Americans did to native American indians.

No mention of that in this article.

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Fear of ICE grips Pittsburgh Public Schools classrooms, impacting attendance Skid Mark Joe <skid-markjoe@cpusa.org> - 2026-02-14 01:08 +0100
  Re: Fear of ICE grips Pittsburgh Public Schools classrooms, impacting attendance Colon Powell <Colon.Powell@tutanato.com> - 2026-02-13 17:46 -0700

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