The schools were not prepared to welcome immigrant children

A report from the Municipal Control Office assures that the public school system was not prepared to welcome all the immigrants who arrived.

This is due to previous school budget cuts.

A situation that Mabel Ramos, a Venezuelan immigrant, mother of two students, experienced at the beginning of this school year, having no resources available in Spanish.

“It’s hard to come to a country where we can’t master the language, so coming and putting our kids into this kind of system is super, really hard for us, as parents, let alone for them as kids,” Mabel said.

Comptroller’s office analysis estimates that 83 percent of schools with immigrant students started the year with budget cuts.

36 percent of them suffered cuts of more than 10 percent.

This report indicates that approximately 370 schools that received these students owe more than $39 million.

These data were released a week after the New York City Department of Education announced it had allocated nearly $12 million in funding for public schools with at least 6 recently arrived immigrant students living in city shelters. .

An amount, which according to this analysis. It’s not enough to provide the resources needed for the more than 5,500 newcomer students who have entered the public school system since July.

For his part, a spokesman for the Department of Education denies this report, claiming that the city government has distributed more than 260 million funds to hire bilingual teachers and allocate more resources to these schools.

Something parents and students have noticed since Ozone Park Public School 202 began adding extracurricular classes in English and other subjects on Saturdays.

“It was difficult at first, because now they’re giving her a lot of support, because in my case, I speak for myself, the kids are getting their English lessons,” Mabel added.

“We have fun there, they give us English on Saturdays, they give us art, sports, physics,” said student Brandon Alexander.

“I have five children and my children are all studying and in all the schools I have attended they have helped me,” said Karina Colón.