Regardless of where in America illegal migrants choose to settle, the local school systems in those areas are going to have to educate their minor children. To check on an example of what wholesale migration is doing to America’s towns, the Wall Street Journal last week visited the town of Stoughton, Massachusetts, about 17 miles south of Boston.
The state of Massachusetts has received the past few years about 11,000 illegal migrants. During that time, Stoughton — population about 29,000 — has received about 200 families, most of them from Haiti, putting pressure on the town’s limited shelter space. The town’s only two hotels and one motel have since been converted to shelter space, costing the town hundreds of thousands of dollars in local room tax revenue.
Also under pressure are Stoughton’s schools, which teach about 3,740 students. WSJ reports that the system’s English teachers, which numbered about 250 three years ago, are now at a level twice that, with demand increasing. The number of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teachers has increased as well, more than doubling from seven to 17. These increased staff and busing costs have consequently risen an estimated $500,000.
Officials note that ESL requirements are not the only reason for the upsurge in expenses confronting the schools. Many migrant children, they say, arrive in town with “huge trauma issues,” Superintendent Joseph Baeta told the Journal. “There are students who don’t even have basic skills in their first language. In some cases they have lived in two, three, or four countries and are not even five years old.”
To make matters worse, the migrant families who are filling the shelters and the schools to overflowing are contributing to the ranks of the town’s poorest residents and are making Stoughton poorer. Researchers for the Center for Immigration Studies found that in 2021 one in four public school students in the United States were from immigrant households — more than double the share in 1990 and more than three times the share in 1980.
Immigration has added disproportionately to the number of low-income students in public schools. In 2021, 21 percent of public school students from immigrant households lived in poverty and they accounted for 29 percent of all students living below the poverty line.
In response to the addition of so many poor and needy migrants, Schools Superintendent Baeta announced in March a 7.1% budget increase. The town is also asking the state for assistance as well.
For more, see Breitbart News.