The Trump administration’s surge in law enforcement has created a chilling effect on student attendance in school districts nationwide, but it appears that preliminary data and attendance trackers from some districts do not show a large-scale enrollment plunge due to Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations near school grounds.
In September, President Donald Trump sent additional federal troops to aid immigration enforcement in Chicago. Despite this, the Chicago Public Schools system said its attendance remains “largely consistent” with last year as some student groups are seeing dips in attendance at “discrete points”鈥攔eferring to individual, separate events鈥攖his fall.
In Washington, D.C., the city’s local law enforcement has always worked alongside federal agencies. After it saw a surge in troops in August and September during a 30-day federal takeover, preliminary data shows the city’s attendance rate was within one percentage point of the same time period in the previous school year for “all students,” according to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. That office said the preliminary data from Sept. 30 included each student group and racial ethnicity group.
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