On the steps of the tweed courthouse a group of immigrants gathered to ask for more resources for their children.
Fabiola Mendieta-Cuapio arrived with her 7-year-old son. For a long time she thought that she knew everything that her son needed in the school system.
“Until I realized that he had disabilities, I don’t call him disabilities, I call him special talent. A special mind,” said Mendieta-Cuapio. “And I began to notice, I realized that in reality we do not know the system completely and that we are missing a lot and that there are no resources and no information.”
It is an example of the many obstacles immigrant families face.
“And well, what we noticed is that many of the immigrants have difficulties to be able to enroll in schools and that should not be the case, I feel,” said Andre Ortiz, of the New York Immigration Coalition.
🔴Happening Now: We are at Tweed Courthouse rallying to ensure equal access to public school programs!
We need:
✅$4M to support immigrant families of 3 & 4-year-olds through the LIFE Project
✅$2.1M for newly-arrived high-school-aged immigrant youth access to transfer schools pic.twitter.com/WJkwKGfOR4— New York Immigration Coalition (@thenyic) May 11, 2022
This time, together with the New York Immigration Coaltion, they are asking the city to invest in programs to enroll students in Pre-K and high school students.
The project called LIFE was first launched in 2017. During that time, organizers say it has helped more than 400 families enroll their children in Pre-K and 3-K. Now they want the city to invest $4 million so they can continue the work.
Fabiola has 2 adopted children and would benefit from this program.
“One is going to be 3 years old, the other is going to be a year and a half old. It would be great if they put it. And that the city of New York give this support to this program”, said Fabiola.
These activists also want the city to invest more than $2 million in a pilot program that would increase access to transfer schools for high school students.
“He is going to create programs inside schools that already exist so that we can do it faster,” added Ortiz.
New York is home to more than 3 million immigrants, and more than a third of students have a parent who speaks limited English, according to the New York Immigration Coalition.
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