In growing cities, a loss of students

In Tempe, Ariz., 13,082 schoolchildren were enrolled in kindergarten through Grade 8 as of Day 25 of this school year. That's 416 fewer – or about 3 percent less – than the same time last year.

"We're looking into doing a marketing study to contact families who left us," says Monica Allread, spokeswoman for the Tempe district. "We want to find out why they left and what could we have done differently."

Miriam's report

If anything, the enrollment numbers can be expected to drop further this fall, according to Miriam, a mother of three school-age children. Almost daily, she says, she hears from friends about others – many of whom have lived in Arizona for 15 to 20 years – who've left or are planning to return to Mexico in December, before the new employer sanctions law goes into effect and before the start of the next school semester in Mexico, when parents can again enroll kids there. They are also worried that a neighbor, landlord, or co-worker will call a hot line recently set up by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office to report possible illegal immigrants, she says.

Moreover, says Miriam, people seem more inclined to return to Mexico than to move to other states in the US. She recently visited a trailer park in Queen Creek, a small community on the southern fringe of Phoenix, where residents were packing up to leave. There are 10 to 15 trailers in the park, she says, and the people there – mostly construction workers – all told her they'd had enough of Arizona and were leaving for Mexico.

Declines in Texas and California, too

Some school districts in California and Texas that serve large, mobile Hispanic communities have reported declines in enrollment, too.

In southern California, the Anaheim City School District, the largest of six districts serving the city, saw its enrollment drop 4 percent this year over last, the second consecutive annual decline. The district had seen such a rapid rise in enrollment through the 1990s that its 24 schools had to shift to a year-round program to educate its mostly Latino student body. The enrollment drop allowed the district this year to take 17 schools off the year-round track.

"We've worked with a demographer," says Suzi Brown, director of communications for the Anaheim City School District. "Our birth rates have declined a bit, but it's also people who can't afford to live in southern California. We're transferring a lot [of former students] to Riverside [County and] San Bernardino County, which has less costly housing ... and a lot to Arizona."

In Texas, Harlandale Independent School District in San Antonio has lost nearly 200 students – or 1.3 percent of the total – this year, according to spokesman Pete Barcenez.

"I don't think this is a coincidence," says Joe Vail, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Houston, of the many reports of lower enrollment. "I think people are fleeing the state and local ordinances that have been putting pressure on local immigrant communities."

The anecdotal evidence is that immigrant families are feeling that pressure. Last week, sheriff's deputies in New Mexico's Otero County nabbed several illegal immigrants and then accompanied them to local schools to pick up their children, says Art Ruiloba, communications coordinator for the Gadsden Independent School District in Sunland, N.M.

"Otero County sheriff's deputies ... picked up a handful of parents, brought them to our schools, and the parents asked to remove the kids from school because the parents or legal guardians were being deported," Mr. Ruiloba says. Six children were removed from the schools to go with their parents. Several other parents have phoned in since then, expressing concern that law-enforcement officials will show up the school to remove undocumented children. Some said they weren't bringing their kids to school for the time being, he says.

It's too soon to have numbers indicating what impact this latest removal of children from the schools has had, Ruiloba says, but "there's an impact of some sort."

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