New York City has received thousands of migrants busses by Governor Greg Abbot of Texas. The city is doing its best to help them. Their children are in public schools.

Parent activist Leonie Haimson visited a school that has enrolled 50 new migrant students. She was stunned to learn that the New York City Department of Education has not provided funding for these students.

She writes:

The school I visited hasn’t received an extra penny, and the principal was told that she would have to wait until November or beyond, for the standard mid-year adjustment to their budget.

When asked when these schools with large numbers of migrant students would receive more funding, Chancellor Banks said at the CPAC meeting this week,and again at a D75 Town Hall meeting, that they were waiting for federal government to kick in with more aid. Here’s the exact quote from the Chancellor at CPAC meeting.

“You might want to be as helpful as possible but if you don’t have the dollars I think the sense here is that the federal government will at some point is going to come and provide a level of support um you’ve got midterm elections that are happening over the next couple of weeks so that’s a lot of this is political as well in terms of when the aid and the support will come but I think I think here in New York the leadership feels as though the federal government is not going to abandon us here.”

However, the DOE still has over more than four billion dollars of unspent federal Covid aid, and an $8 billion reserve fund, so the idea that they couldn’t front the money to schools before the feds provide more dollars is absurd. The account of my visit to this school follows.