The Association of Australian Education Representatives in India (AAERI), in a submission to the Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for Education, has urged the Labor government to link student visas to the institution of initial enrolment.
The association, established in October 1996 to uphold the credibility of education agents recruiting students for Australian institutions, proposed that any change in course or institution should require a new visa application, with the existing visa automatically cancelled upon such a change.
“This proposed reform means that a student’s visa would be directly linked to the education provider (institution) listed in their initial Confirmation of Enrolment (CoE) at the time of visa approval. The student would be required to remain enrolled at that institution,” read a statement by AAERI.
The association expalined that if a student wishes to change their course or education provider, they must obtain a new CoE from the new institution, apply for a fresh student visa, and once again demonstrate that they meet all Genuine Student requirements.
“Such a measure will strengthen the integrity of Australia’s student visa program, reduce exploitation in the education sector, improve compliance with Genuine Student (GS) criteria, and safeguard Australia’s reputation as a provider of high-quality international education,” it added.
“Additionally, this reform will support ethical education agents and reputable institutions by discouraging course-hopping and misuse of the student visa system, thereby enhancing student retention and sector stability.”
Such a measure will strengthen the integrity of Australia’s student visa program, reduce exploitation in the education sector, improve compliance with Genuine Student (GS) criteria, and safeguard Australia’s reputation as a provider of high-quality international education. AAERI
Based on AAERI’s submission, such a policy would align with Condition 8516, which requires students to remain enrolled in a registered course at the same level or higher than the one for which their visa was originally granted.
As per reports, education loan applications from India, one of Australia’s biggest student markets, have quadrupled since the Covid pandemic, with the number of loan-seeking students expected to rise further.
With many students relying on Indian public and private banks for education loans, changes in their courses in Australia have often led to their original loans being considered void, placing many at significant financial risk.
“Based on our communication with several Indian banks, if a student changes their course or education provider after arriving in Australia, their loan arrangements may need to be reassessed, taking into account new course fees, institution credibility, and repayment ability,” stated AAERI.
“The original loan is void and stands suspended. This poses significant financial risks for students and impacts their compliance with visa conditions.”
According to AAERI, the problem is also prevalent among Nepali students, with nearly 60,000 currently studying in Australia.
The association also highlighted examples from other study destinations that Australia can learn from in implementing the proposed framework.
While New Zealand allows course or provider changes but may require a variation of conditions or a new visa, especially for pathway visa holders or when moving to lower-level courses, in the UK, the student visa system is closely tied to licensed sponsors through the Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies, so changing institutions generally requires a new CAS and immigration permission.
In Canada, stricter rules have been implemented requiring international students to be enrolled at the Designated Learning Institution named on their study permit, and to change institutions, students must apply for and obtain a new study permit, emphasising the importance of linking visas to specific institutions.
“Australia’s recent reforms, such as closing the concurrent CoE loophole and requiring CoEs for onshore visa applications, are steps in a similar direction but do not go far enough to address the core issue of unethical student poaching, misuse of student visa and provider switching,” stated AAERI.
AAERI’s call for action comes at a time when the return of the Labour government is viewed as “offering little comfort to an international education sector already under-siege”, as highlighted in a recent article by Ian Pratt, managing director of Lexis English, for The PIE News.
In Anthony Albanese’s second term, the Prime Minister established a new role – assistant minister for international education – and appointed Victorian MP Julian Hill.
“It’s important that students who come here get a quality education… This sector is complex and Julian Hill is someone who’s been involved as a local member as well, and I think he’ll be a very good appointment,” Albanese stated at a press conference this week.
“Denver Public Schools to close 7 schools, cut grades at 3 others despite heavy resistance.”
“The list is out: These are the SFUSD schools facing closure.”
Such reports can leave the impression that districts are rapidly closing schools in response to declining enrollment and families leaving for charters, private schools and homeschooling.
But the data tells a different story.
School closures have actually declined over the past decade, a period of financial instability that only increased in the aftermath of the pandemic, according to research from the Brookings Institution.
The analysis, shared exclusively with The 74, shows that in 2014-15, the closure rate — the share of schools nationwide that were open one year and closed the next — was 1.3%. In 2023-24, the rate was just .8%, up from .7% the year before.
“I think it’s important for people to realize how rare school closures are,” said Sofoklis Goulas, a Brookings fellow and the study’s author.
Last fall, his research showed how schools that have lost at least 20% of their enrollment since the pandemic are more likely to be low-performing. The Clark County Public Schools, which includes Las Vegas, had the most schools on the list — 19 — but isn’t currently considering closures. In Philadelphia, with 12 schools in that category, district leaders are just beginning to discuss closures.
When it released Goulas’s initial report, leaders of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute argued that low-performing schools should be the first to close. But efforts to do so are often met with pushback from families, teachers and advocacy groups who argue that shutting down schools unfairly harms poor and minority students and contributes to neighborhood blight. Their pleas often push district leaders to retreat. Working in advocates’ favor, experts say, is the fact that many big district leaders are untested and have never had to navigate the emotionally charged waters of closing schools.
“Closing a neighborhood school is probably one of the most difficult decisions a district’s board makes,” said Michael Fine, CEO of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, a California state agency that provides financial oversight to districts. “They are going to avoid that decision as long as they can and at all costs.”
Such examples aren’t hard to find:
Just weeks after announcing closures, the San Francisco district halted plans to shutter any schools this fall.
In September, outgoing Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez pledged to put off school closures for another two years, even though state law allows the city to take action sooner. The district is in the process of absorbing five charter schools to keep them from closing.
In October, Pittsburgh Public Schools recommended closing 14 schools; several others were set to be relocated and reconfigured. About a month later, Superintendent Wayne Walters hit pause, saying the district needed more “thoughtful planning” and community input.
Last May, the Seattle Public Schools announced it would shutter 20 elementary schools next school year in response to a $100 million-plus budget deficit. They later increased the number to 21. By October, the list had dwindled to four schools. Just before Thanksgiving, Superintendent Brent Jones withdrew the plan entirely.
“This decision allows us to clarify the process, deepen our understanding of the potential impacts, and thoughtfully determine our next steps,” Jones wrote to families. While the plan would have saved the district $5.5 million, he said, “These savings should not come at the cost of dividing our community.”
Graham Hill Elementary in Seattle, which fifth grader Wren Alexander has attended since kindergarten, was initially on the list. The Title I school sits on top of a hill in a desirable area overlooking Lake Washington. But it also draws students from the lower-income, highly diverse Brighton Park neighborhood.
Among Wren’s neighbors are students from Ethiopia, Vietnam and Guatemala. Wren, who moves on to middle school this fall, said she looks forward to visiting her former teachers and cried when she heard Graham Hill might close. She wanted her younger brother and sister to develop the same warm connection she had.
“I don’t think I would be who I am if I didn’t go to the school,” she said.
Wren Alexander and her little sister Nico, outside Graham Hill. (Courtesy of Tricia Alexander)
Tricia Alexander, her mother, was among those who opposed the closures, participating in rallies outside the district’s administration building and before board meetings.
“We were really loud,” said Alexander, who’s also part of Billion Dollar Bake Sale, an effort to advocate for more state education funding. She said there was “no real evidence” that closing schools would have solved the district’s budget woes. “In no way would kids win.”
It’s a view shared by many school finance experts, who note that the bulk of school funding is tied up in salaries, not facility costs. Districts may save some money from closing schools, but unless coupled with staff reductions, it’s often not enough to make up for large budget shortfalls.
‘So bad at this’
If enrollment doesn’t pick up, experts say, leaders who delay closures will have to confront the same issues a year later or — perhaps even more likely — pass the problems on to their successors.
“If there continues to be fewer and fewer children …then that doesn’t get better,” said Brian Eschbacher, an enrollment consultant.
One Chicago high school, for example, had just 33 students last year. In Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest district, 34 elementary schools have fewer than 200 students and 29 of those are using less than half of the building, according to a recent report. The share of U.S. students being educated outside of traditional schools also continues to increase, according to a forthcoming analysis Goulas conducted with researchers at Yale University.
“We don’t see a trajectory of enrollment recovery,” he said. “Things actually got worse in the most recently released data batch.”
But such conditions haven’t stopped advocacy groups from campaigning against closures. One of them, the left-leaning Advancement Project, has joined with local groups in Denver and Pittsburgh to make a case against closures nationally.
“All children deserve to have a local, neighborhood public school in which they and their families have a say,” said Jessica Alcantara, senior attorney for the group’s Opportunity to Learn program. “It’s not just that school closures are hard on families. They harm the full education ecosystem that makes up a school — students, families, school staff and whole communities.”
Last May, Alcantara and other Advancement Project staff urged the U.S. Department of Education to treat school closures as a civil rights issue. Nine of the 10 schools the Denver district planned to close in 2022 had a majority Black or Hispanic student population.
The advocates argued that in cases of enrollment loss, run-down facilities and empty classrooms, there are alternatives to closing schools. They encourage communities to push for renovations and urge district leaders to use vacant spaces for STEM, arts or other programs that might attract families. Opponents of closures also say that districts sometimes underestimate how much of a building is used for non-classroom purposes like special education services, early-childhood programs and mental health.
Eschbacher’s assessment of why districts often back down from closing schools is more blunt.
“Districts are so bad at this,” he said. “If you just do a few things wrong, it could sink the whole effort.”
For one, leaders often target schools with under 300 students for closure, appealing to parents that they can’t afford to staff them with arts programs, a school nurse or a librarian.
But those explanations sometimes fall flat.
“Parents always say, ‘I wanted a small school. I know my teachers and they know my kid. And it’s right down the street,’” Eschbacher said. If they didn’t like their school, he added, they would have likely would have chosen a charter or some other option.
District officials also run into trouble if they try to spin the data. When Seattle officials talked about “right-sizing” the district, they pointed to the loss of 4,900 students since 2019-20.
But Albert Wong, a parent in the district and a lifelong Seattle resident, knew there was more to the story. Not only is the current enrollment higher than it was from 2000 to 2011, the pandemic-related decline seems to have leveled off. In a commentary, he argued that officials presented misleading data “to make current enrollment look exceptionally bad.”
Graham Hill Elementary, fifth-grader Wren’s school, actually saw a slight increase in enrollment this year, including a new class for preschoolers with disabilities. And while Pittsburgh schools are projected to lose another 5,000 students over the next six years, enrollment this year held steady at about 18,400.
To Eschbacher, the “burden of proof is always on the district” to make an airtight case for why students would be better off in larger schools. He has applauded the Denver-area Jeffco Public Schools, which has closed 21 schools since 2021, for having state demographers, not just district officials, explain population trends to families at community meetings.
‘It wasn’t realistic’
Walters, Pittsburgh’s superintendent, can easily rattle off reasons why the district should rethink how it uses its buildings. Early last year, local news reports showed that almost half of the district’s schools were less than 50% full.
“We’ve lost about a fourth of our population, but we have not changed anything to our footprint,” he said.
Meanwhile, the average age of the district’s buildings is 90 years old, and many lack air-conditioning, forcing some schools to send students home in sweltering weather.
But a consulting group’s proposal showed that Black and low-income students and those with disabilities would be disproportionately affected by the changes. Several advocacy groups drew attention to those disparities, calling the effort “rushed.”
412 Justice, an advocacy group, is among the community organizations pushing for alternatives to school closures in Pittsburgh. (412 Justice)
Walters agreed and put the plan on hold last fall, saying he lacked “robust” responses to parents’ tough questions about how schools would change for their kids.
“It doesn’t mean that we don’t see a path forward,” he said. “But it wasn’t realistic that we would have those questions answered within the timeline that we’ve been given.”
In March, parents pushed for another delay, causing the school board to postpone a vote on the next phase in the closure process.
As the Jeffco district demonstrates, some school systems are following through with closures. The school board in nearby Denver unanimously voted in November to close seven schools and downsize three more.
But that’s after community protests pushed the district to put the brakes on a plan to close 19 schools in 2021. Advocates argued that families in low-income areas, who had been heavily impacted by the pandemic, would be most affected. Then the district only closed three in 2023, and now board members are considering a pause on closures for three years.
School boards closing a dozen or more schools are often catching up with work their predecessors let pile up, said Goulas of Brookings.
“Closing a single school allows for easier placement of students and minimizes the political cost and community stress,” he said. “When a district releases a long list of schools to close, it likely indicates that they waited for conditions to improve, but this didn’t happen.”
Angel Gober, executive director of 412 Justice — one of 16 organizations that called on the Pittsburgh district to drop its plan — acknowledged that their fight isn’t over.
“I think we got a temporary blessing from God,” she said. But she wants the district to explore a host of alternatives, like community schools and corporate support, before it shutters and sells off buildings. “We do have very old infrastructure, and that is an equity issue. But can we try five things before we make a drastic decision to close schools for forever?”
A fourth round of cutbacks took place on May 9. NSF observers were still trying to piece together the size and scope of this wave of destruction. A division focused on equity in education was eliminated and all its employees were fired. And the process for reviewing and approving future research grants was thrown into chaos with the elimination of division directors who were stripped of their powers.
Meanwhile, there was more clarity surrounding a third round of cuts that took place a week earlier on May 2. That round terminated more than 330 grants, raising the total number of terminated grants to at least 1,379, according to Grant Watch, a new project launched to track the Trump administration’s termination of grants at scientific research agencies. All but two of the terminated grants in early May were in the education division, and mostly targeted efforts to promote equity by increasing the participation of women and Black and Hispanic students in STEM fields. The number of activegrants by the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM within the education directorate was slashed almost in half, from 902 research grants to 461.
Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.
Combined with two earlier rounds of NSF cuts at in April, education now accounts for more than half of the nearly 1,400 terminated grants and almost three-quarters of their $1 billion value. Those dollars will no longer flow to universities and research organizations.
Cuts to STEM education dominate NSF grant terminations
… and nearly three-quarters of their $1 billion value are in education
Data source: Grant Watch, May 7, 2025. Charts by Jill Barshay/The Hechinger Report
The cuts are being felt across the nation. Grant Watch also created a map of the United States, showing that both red and blue states are losing federal research dollars.
Source: Grant Watch, May 7, 2025
It remains unclear exactly how NSF is choosing which grants to cancel and exactly who is making the decisions. Weekly waves of cuts began after the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE entered NSF headquarters in mid April. Only 40 percent of the terminated grants were also in a database of 3,400 research grants compiled last year by Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican. Cruz characterized them as “questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.” Sixty percent were not on the Cruz list.
Source: Grant Watch, May 7, 2025
Other NSF cuts also affect education. Earlier this year, NSF cut in half the number of new students that it would support through graduate school from 2,000 to 1,000. Universities are bracing to hear this summer if NSF will continue to support graduate students who are already a part of its graduate research fellowship program.
NSF watchers were still compiling a list of the research grants that were terminated on May 9, the date of the most recent fourth round of research cuts. It was unclear if any research grants to promote equity in STEM education remained active.
The Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM, a unit of the Education Directorate, was “sunset,” according to a May 9 email sent to NSF employees and obtained by the Hechinger Report, and all of its employees were fired. According to the email, this “reduction in force” is slated to be completed by July 12. However, later on May 9, a federal judge in San Francisco temporarily blocked the Trump administration from implementing its “reduction in force” firings of federal employees at the NSF and 19 other agencies.
An initial hearing for a group of three legal cases by education researchers against the Department of Education is scheduled for May 16. At the hearing, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., will hear arguments over whether the court should temporarily restore terminated research studies and data collections and bring back fired Education Department employees while it considers whether the Trump administration exceeded its executive authority.
A first hearing scheduled for May 9 was postponed. At the May 16 hearing, the court will hear two similar motions from two different cases: one filed by the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) and the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), and the other filed by National Academy of Education (NAEd) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). A third suit by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) was filed in federal court in Maryland and will not be part of the May 16 hearing.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
LOS ANGELES — Scattered among the shrubs on the southern border lie belongings migrants left behind — toothbrushes, water bottles, baseball caps. Some of the owners forged north, crossing the boundary undetected. Others were apprehended or succumbed to dehydration, drowning or one of the unimaginable dangers in the harsh desert that straddles Mexico and the United States.
Angélica Reyes survived. At nine months old, she made the journey that could have claimed her life just as it started.
Since 1994, approximately 10,000 migrants have died in the borderlands. That year, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect. Designed to open trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico, the now-defunct policy has faced criticism for depressing Mexican wages. Their income flatlining, Reyes said, her parents left the city of Guadalajara, in the western part of Mexico, and headed with her to Los Angeles. They did not have authorization to live in the United States.
Reyes is now 32, though she remembers knowing she was undocumented as early as first grade.
“My mom was very cognizant of the discrimination and the obstacles that I would face throughout my life,” she said. “She made it clear, like, ‘You can’t mess up. You need to be twice as good to get half of the respect. You need to really prove that you earned your spot.’”
To do that, Reyes earned the good grades that set her up to become a history teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District. She is one of about 15,000 teachers — and among the more than 835,000 undocumented people — who have received temporary permission to live, work and study in the United States through an Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Women represent over half of DACA recipients, whose future in this country has been under threat by legal challenges to the program’s existence and the anti-immigration agenda of President Donald Trump.
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If DACA ends, the goal of ongoing litigation, 700 education personnel, including teachers and teacher aides, would lose their jobs each month for two years as their work permits are revoked, according to FWD.us, an immigration reform organization. In California, the state with the most DACA recipients, 200 educators would lose their jobs monthly. In Texas, 100 would.
DACA-recipient teachers relate firsthand to the estimated 620,000 undocumented K-1 2 students, who confide in them about their experiences in immigrant families. They show youth that regardless of legal status, it’s possible to attain one’s professional goals. Many of these teachers are also activists, fighting for their students, themselves and other marginalized people. They see themselves as assets to schools.
“My immigration status inspires both my undocumented and documented students because they know all the obstacles that are faced by folks with my immigration status can be overcome,” Reyes said. “They know that if I could do it, that’s something that they could do as well.”
Without undocumented teachers, educator shortages across states could worsen. California has spent about $1.6 billion since the 2016-17 school year to tackle its teacher shortage. Still, the state issued 11 percent fewer teaching credentials between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. Last year, it enacted legislation to eliminate barriers to entry, dropping a standardized test teaching candidates had to pass to demonstrate competence in math, reading and writing. But since undocumented immigrants aren’t widely perceived to be career professionals, the fact that schoolchildren nationwide depend on them has received scant attention in the broader immigration debate.
Maria Miranda, elementary vice president of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) labor union, said undocumented teachers “bring a different perspective to the table, a different skill set.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teacher labor union, said DACA recipients in classrooms have strengthened the United States.
“They are role models, like all teachers, and should be treated as such, but instead, they are made to feel uncertain and fearful as their protections are challenged in court and as the Trump administration promotes mass deportations, even from sensitive locations like schools that were once considered off limits,” Weingarten said. “Immigration reform can’t be used as an excuse to rip teachers out of classrooms, where they are so desperately needed.”
Reyes at 1 year old with her father. (Angelica Reyes)
When Reyes was about to register for the SAT during her senior year in high school, one misinformed guidance counselor asked her why she planned to take the college entrance exam, insisting that higher education was off limits to undocumented students.
“I was devastated. It broke my heart,” Reyes said. “I remember crying and telling my mom, ‘I worked hard, for what?’”
Since 2001, however, California has extended access to in-state college tuition to undocumented students who have lived there long term. Unaware of this law and under the assumption that her counselor was correct, Reyes missed the deadline for the SAT and for the application to University of California schools, so she enrolled in a community college she could afford, a common path for many undocumented immigrants.
Then, in 2011, a state law was enacted that made her cry tears of gratitude: the California DREAM Act. The policy allows undocumented immigrants who entered the United States before they were 16 to obtain financial aid if they’ve earned qualifying credits at California schools. These young people have been nicknamed Dreamers after the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, a 2001 federal bill that would have given them legal status had it succeeded.
Reyes said that when she decided to apply to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a community college counselor took in her light brown skin and wavy black mane and without so much as seeing the 4.0 GPA in her transcript, told her to apply somewhere less competitive.
“I’m a competitive student!” Reyes recalled balking. “She opened my chart and she was, like, ‘Oh, you actually are.’ Her tune changed so quickly. It was really infuriating because if I had believed her, like many students believe counselors, I would have not gone to UCLA.”
In college, Reyes had to make a choice about her career path. Her research project on youth activism at Abraham Lincoln High School, where she graduated in 2010, had drawn her to education. “I realized that’s where I was needed,” she said.
It was at Lincoln High in March 1968 that students spearheaded the protests known as the Chicano Blowouts or East Los Angeles Walkouts. With signs stating “School Not Prison” and “We Are Not Dirty Mexicans,” almost 15,000 youth from Lincoln and other schools in historically Mexican-American East L.A. walked out of classes for a week to protest their substandard education.
Chicano student walkouts in front of Abraham Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles during the 1968 blowouts. (LAPL)
Back then, students could be paddled for speaking Spanish, and with few advanced courses at Eastside schools, they were routinely steered to vocational classes like auto shop. These inequities contributed to a 60 percent dropout rate in the area. Jailed for their activism against these circumstances, the teenagers garnered community support that ushered in sweeping policy changes — bilingual instruction, ethnic studies and more Latino teachers.
Today, the carnicerías, bungalow homes and palm trees along North Broadway Avenue, leading to 93 acres of green hills, offer no hint of the past tumult, but a mural at Lincoln commemorates the walkouts of nearly six decades ago.
Through her research, which also explored youth activism of the 2010s, Reyes learned that contemporary Lincoln High students continued to have unmet needs, such as support applying for college financial aid or accessing legal services as members of immigrant households. So when Lincoln High teachers asked if she wanted to develop a space to serve students, Reyes threw herself into the effort. The Paula Crisostomo Dream Center — named after a lead activist of the Chicano Blowouts and the inspiration for the 2006 film “Walkout” — opened at Lincoln in 2015.
“We established programming for immigrant students, for immigrant parents. We did immigrant and educational history,” Reyes said. “It’s still a resource for students at Lincoln, and we’ve expanded it to several other schools.”
Working at the Dream Center for three years convinced her that teaching was the best way to reach undocumented and marginalized youth. Rather than dismiss them, as she had been dismissed by school counselors, she would inspire students to excel academically regardless of legal status. In 2012, four years before she graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and six years before she earned her master’s in education from the university, DACA enabled undocumented students like herself to become career professionals.
Reyes surrounded by family at her high school graduation. (Angelica Reyes)
It’s complicated: Those two words capture Reyes’ feelings about DACA. Although the program allowed her to teach, she has long viewed it as flawed, exploitative and a “constant reminder” she isn’t “fully accepted.”
DACA stems from the activism of undocumented college students frustrated that the DREAM Act failed and that their immigration status would limit their potential, said Jennifer R. Nájera, author of “Learning to Lead: Undocumented Students Mobilizing Education.” Fighting for immigrant rights, they found a purpose.
Like the DREAM Act, DACA was reserved for young people who came to the United States as children and didn’t have criminal histories. “They had to graduate from high school or college or go to the military, show ‘good moral character,’” said Nájera, an associate professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Instead of citizenship, Obama’s executive order “provided temporary relief from deportation, a two-year relief specifically, that could be renewed, and a work permit, which was a big deal.”
While DACA recipients cherished their professional opportunities, some contended that the policy cast them as second-class citizens, Nájera said.
That includes Reyes.
“I knew it was a Band-Aid,” she said. “In fact, when I first started teaching, my DACA expired because of an issue with the application. They had asked me if I was in a gang, and apparently I didn’t check off the X hard enough, so I wasn’t hired at the beginning of the year. I remember feeling this immense frustration.”
Los Angeles Unified employs about 300 DACA-recipient school personnel, according to Miranda of the UTLA labor union. As Reyes’ teaching career started, DACA weathered the first of multiple legal challenges. Trump rescinded the program during his first term, a move the Supreme Court later blocked; at the time, Reyes told her students about possibly losing her job. Since then, she has endured several other threats to DACA , though she’s now pained to tell her students that the program isn’t accepting new applicants.
DACA, she said, must be replaced with a sustainable alternative.
In a December interview, Trump said, “We’re going to have to do something with” DACA recipients. “They were brought into this country many years ago” and “in many cases, they’ve become successful.”
But that sympathy has been absent from his immigration policies since he resumed office. He has issued an executive order prohibiting undocumented college students from receiving in-state tuition. He has also lifted restrictions on immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations” such as churches, hospitals and schools, prompting parents nationwide to keep kids out of class.
A protester waves the Mexican flag during a demonstration for immigration rights outside Los Angeles City Hall on February 5, 2025. (Qian Weizhong/Getty Images)
“A lot of times, the children are U.S. citizens and the parents are concerned,” Reyes said. “But I’ve had students who shared that their parents are U.S. citizens, and they’re still scared because they know that U.S. citizens are also caught up in these raids. So, this isn’t about criminality. It’s about the targeting of Brown folks.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other federal authorities reportedly detained or deported at least 10 U.S. citizens, including children, in the first 100 days of Trump’s second term.
Last month, the California state superintendent presented Senate Bill 48 to limit ICE appearances at schools as absences have spiked — and schools could lose millions of dollars since their funding is tied to average daily student attendance. About half of California children belong to families that include at least one immigrant parent, while one in five live in mixed-status families with at least one undocumented parent.
“It’s very taxing emotionally for our members and our students,” Miranda said of ICE enforcement. “We have students at the elementary level who are terrified of seeing anyone in uniform. Some of them are so young that they don’t know the difference between the police and immigration. It’s a very scary moment.”
When Trump targeted DACA during his first term, Reyes warned in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece that disbanding the program could upend public education. But now she says her students deserve more than DACA’s “breadcrumbs.”
“We need to fight for something new because my kids want to be chefs and doctors and lawyers, but they’re being held back by their immigration status,” she said. “It’s excruciating in two ways: One, I want my students to have the opportunities that they deserve to serve the community. And, two, I don’t know when I’m going to be taken from them because of my own uncertainty.”
For now, she knows that her presence makes a difference at her high school. Los Angeles Unified has an immigrant student body of about 30,000 students, according to UTLA. Of those, one in four is undocumented. After Reyes shared her immigration status with students during a recent lunchtime conversation, she said a ninth grader confessed that she planned to quit school because she, too, is undocumented. Learning Reyes managed to become a teacher made the girl reconsider.
“It was really beautiful to see that, like it reignited her hope to have a bright future,” Reyes said.
Although the risks of revealing her status frighten her, her conscience compels her to, Reyes said. She quoted Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata: “It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”
Staying silent as the president attacks immigrants would make it hard for Reyes to face the youth in her life — her son, especially.
Reyes after receiving her master’s degree in education from UCLA. (Angelica Reyes)
Whenever a state turned red on Election Night, Nathan Reyes felt his anxiety shoot up. Still, he held out hope Kamala Harris would win. Then the Electoral College math made it plain: Donald Trump would be president again.
Although he’s a U.S. citizen, Nathan wondered what lay ahead for his undocumented relatives under a president promising mass deportations.
“I feel worried for them because if they get deported, what am I going to do?” he asked. “Where am I going to stay?”
So, he began to plan. He and his family would “have to pick our poison” — stay in a country hostile to their presence or self-deport together to Mexico regardless of citizenship status.
That her son, with a pile of ringlets and a round cherubic face, was even considering these options stunned Reyes. Nathan is in seventh grade.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this kid is 12,’” Angélica Reyes said. “Why is he talking about this?’”
Rummaging through a bin of childhood possessions in her mother’s bedroom last year, Reyes found a poem she wrote in fourth grade about her fear of police. Her parents were street food vendors, an occupation California criminalized until 2018, so Reyes realized growing up that one brush with the law could have seen them deported.
Just as she did not have a childhood free of deportation fears, neither has her son.
Nathan, now 13, is hardly the only youth pondering the possibility of a relative’s departure, according to Lisette Sanchez, a psychologist in Long Beach, California. She said children are leaving school with “Know Your Rights” cards advising them of their civil liberties during ICE encounters, but they may not understand the information.
“They’re just feeling fear,” she said. “They’re being told something’s gonna happen. So mental health wise, you’re looking at chronic anxiety. You’re looking at hypervigilance.”
Angélica Reyes and her son Nathan Reyes in front of Abraham Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles, California, on February 9, 2025. (Zaydee Sanchez/The 19th)
To gain some sense of control, they may overconsume social media, leading to racing thoughts, rapid heart rate and sleeping difficulties.
“It’s this chronic nonstop anxiety because the state of uncertainty feels never-ending, and in many ways, it is not ending, right?” Sanchez said. “There’s different news every day.”
By speaking openly with children, parents can help them better manage stress, she said. Teachers, if they’re permitted, can broach the topic of immigration. Nathan appreciated how his Spanish teacher led a class discussion after the election.
“Sharing your feelings and emotions and finding that a lot of other people are feeling very similar can bring comfort to you,” he said.
Reyes gave birth to her son while she was in college and briefly wed to his father. She applied for legal status as an immediate family member of a U.S. citizen, her spouse. But years passed before the federal government responded to her request, she said. By then, her marriage had ended.
“I don’t think people understand how long the path to citizenship can be, what it looks like, how costly and time-intensive it is,” Sanchez said.
Reyes, who has not remarried, said being undocumented seeps into every aspect of her life, including romantic relationships. She feels obligated to tell prospective partners about her status.
“I remember to always be upfront, like, ‘Hey, I’m undocumented. I don’t want you to think I’m going to use you for papers,’” she said.
Reyes lives in one of the country’s 4.7 million mixed-status households, which include undocumented individuals and people with legal status or U.S. citizenship. If she gets deported, she has arranged for others to care for her son.
Her sister, two years younger, is a U.S. citizen. Asked if she resents that twist of fate, Reyes said, “I’m happy that she gets to be safe. I think that there’s a lot of pain and guilt for her.”
Her sister realizes, Reyes said, that her entire family could be taken away.
Reyes and her son Nathan doing a science experiment when he was little. (Angelica Reyes)
Should she be forced out of the only country she considers home, Reyes wants her son to know this: “I would never willingly leave you. I am dedicated to you. I love you, and I will always be working as hard as possible to get back to you.”
For Nathan, it is mind-boggling that anyone would want his mother out. He doesn’t understand why politicians demonize immigrants. Trump launched his first presidential campaign calling them criminals and continues to malign them.
“My mom has done a lot of good for her community,” Nathan said. “She has organized a finders keepers closet where people who don’t have some resources they need, like canned food or clothes, can take what they need.”
Just as Nathan defends her honor, Reyes vouches for her parents. Her mother is now a nail technician and her father is a food vendor. Growing up, she said, she watched them visit the sick, volunteer at churches and fundraise for the poor.
“Whenever they saw a need, they stepped up, and they didn’t wait for someone else to help,” she said.
She’s hurt when people sympathize with Dreamers while disparaging their parents, that the immigration system paints family members as saints or sinners. The DACA recipients she’s researched feel similarly, Nájera said.
“Many of the students that I interviewed were always talking about their parents,” Nájera said. “They did not want their stories to be divorced from their parents and their family stories. These families, they’re units.”
But the Dream Act caused a migrant generational divide, insinuating that those who arrived in this country as children deserve citizenship, while their parents and others who arrived as adults do not, Nájera said.
Angélica Reyes helped paint the red and yellow skulls on the mural across the street from Abraham Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles, where she graduated. (Zaydee Sanchez/The 19th)
Migration often occurs out of necessity. For example, after NAFTA took effect in 1994, U.S. agricultural exports flooded Mexico, displacing workers, according to Edward Alden, a distinguished visiting professor in the College of Business and Economics at Western Washington University. Four years earlier, over 4 million Mexican migrants were in the United States, a figure that ballooned to nearly 13 million — around 9 percent of Mexico’s population — by 2008.
Reyes said NAFTA crushed the bakery business her father’s side of the family owned because it could not compete with the U.S. companies that swooped in. Her parents migrated north to earn higher wages.
Today, economic instability is but one of the reasons that motivate migrants.
“A lot of the Venezuelans are leaving Venezuela because it’s a violent, dangerous place, and the government has destroyed the economy in different ways,” Alden said. “Same thing out of Central America. These are people who aren’t necessarily leaving for economic reasons. They’re doing it for personal safety reasons.”
Reyes said she has Central American students who fled horrors. She wants them to feel safe in the United States, and the fact Los Angeles Unified has pledged not to cooperate with immigration officials voluntarily provides some comfort. Run by a formerly undocumented superintendent, the sanctuary districtblocked Homeland Security agents from entering two schools in April.
The fear of raids on campuses has traumatized her students, Reyes said. “It’s so difficult to convince my students that they are worthy of love and that they’re worthy of respect and that they deserve civil rights.”
It is equally difficult to keep advocating for herself, she said. But as the threat of deportation looms, she has no choice but to keep fighting.
“It’s hard to know that I can’t earn citizenship and that I can’t give my kid stability or safety,” she said. “I feel like if I could earn it, I would have three citizenships. I would have put in the work.”
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Tennessee state Sen. Bo Watson wants to eject undocumented students from public school classrooms. But first, he needs their data.
Watson seeks to require students statewide to submit a birth certificate or other sensitive documents to secure their seats — one of numerous efforts nationwide this year as Republican state lawmakers seek to challenge a decades-old Supreme Court precedent enshrining students’ right to a free public education regardless of their immigration status.
Some 300 demonstrators participate in a Waukegan, Illinois, rally on Feb. 1 to draw attention to an increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the area. Privacy advocates warn student records could be used to assist deportations. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
In my latest feature this week, I dive into why those efforts have alarmed student data privacy advocates, who warn that efforts to compile data on immigrant students could be used not just to deny them an education — it could also fall into the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
As the Trump administration ramps up deportations and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency reportedly works to create a “master database” of government records to zero in on migrants, data privacy experts warn that state and federal data about immigrant students could be weaponized.
In the news
Cybercriminals demanded ransom payments from school districts nationwide this week, using millions of K-12 students’ sensitive data as leverage after the files were stolen from education technology giant PowerSchool in a massive cyberattack late last year. The development undercuts PowerSchool’s decision to pay a ransom in December to keep the sensitive documents under wraps. | The 74
Gutted: Investigations at the Education Department’s civil rights office have trickled to a halt as the Trump administration installs a “shadow division” to advance cases that align with the president’s agenda. | ProPublica
Civil rights groups, students and parents have asked courts to block the Education Department’s civil rights enforcement changes under Trump, saying they fail to hold schools accountable for racial harassment and abuses against children with disabilities. | K-12 Dive
Among the thousands of cases put on the back burner is a complaint from a Texas teenager who was kneed in the face by a campus cop. | The 74
‘The hardest case for mercy’: Congratulations to Marshall Project contributor Joe Sexton, who was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his reporting on a legal team’s successful bid to spare the Parkland, Florida, school shooter from the death penalty. | The Marshall Project
The city council in Uvalde, Texas, approved a $2 million settlement with the families of the victims in the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School, the first lawsuit to end with monetary payouts since 19 children and two teachers were killed. | Insurance Journal
In Michigan, a state commission created in the wake of the 2021 school shooting at Oxford High School, which resulted in the deaths of four students, issued a final report calling for additional funding to strengthen school mental health supports. | Chalkbeat
Meanwhile, at the federal level, the Education Department axed $1 billion in federal grants designed to train mental health professionals and place them in schools in a bid to thwart mass shootings. | The 74
A high school substitute teacher in Ohio was arrested on accusations she offered a student $2,000 to murder her husband. | WRIC
Connecticut schools have been forced to evacuate from fires caused by a “dangerous TikTok trend” where students stab school-issued laptops with paper clips to cause electrical short circuits. | WFSB
Eleven high school lacrosse players in upstate New York face unlawful imprisonment charges on accusations they staged a kidnapping of younger teammates who thought they were being abducted by armed assailants. | CNN
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The Future of Privacy Forum has “retired” its Student Privacy Pledge after a decade. The pledge, which was designed to ensure education technology companies were ethical stewards of students’ sensitive data, was ended due to “the changing technological and policy landscape regarding education technology.” | Future of Privacy Forum
The pledge had previously faced scrutiny over its ability to hold tech vendors accountable for violating its terms. | The 74
New kid on the block: Almost simultaneously, Common Sense Privacy launched a “privacy seal certification” to recognize vendors that are “deeply committed to privacy.” | Business Wire
Google plans to roll out an artificial intelligence chatbot for children as the tech giant seeks to attract young eyeballs to its AI products. | The New York Times
Kansas schools plan to spend state money on AI tools to spot guns despite concerns over reports of false alarms. | Beacon Media
ICYMI @The74
A new report from the Department of Health and Human Services suggests gender-affirming health care puts transgender youth at risk but the report ignores years of research indicating otherwise. (Getty Images)
Stitt signed Senate Bill 139 on Monday to implement the “bell to bell” ban for the 2025-26 school year. The restriction becomes optional for districts in the 2026-27 school year and thereafter.
While the yearlong ban is in place, each district’s school board must adopt a policy restricting students from using cellphones, laptops, tablets, smart watches, smart headphones and smart glasses from the first bell ringing in the instructional day until final dismissal. The policy must outline disciplinary procedures for enforcing the rule.
School-issued or school-approved devices used for classroom instruction are still allowed under the law. Districts could permit cellphone use for emergencies and for students who need it to monitor a health issue.
Stitt previously urged public schools to find cost-neutral ways to make classrooms cellphone free to reverse a “worrying trend” of distraction, bullying and learning difficulties.
“We’re seeing classrooms across the country struggle with the influx of cellphone use by students,” Stitt said in a statement Tuesday. “That’s why I issued my cellphone free school challenge in the fall. We want kids to be focused and present while they’re with their teachers, and this legislation helps promote an environment conducive to learning.”
Before the 2025 legislative session began, state lawmakers met with mental health researchers who warned about the negative effect and addictive impact of digital media on youth. They also spoke with Oklahoma educators who said their schools saw better student behavior after banning cellphones.
Among the nation’s largest teachers union, 90% of members said they support cellphone restrictions during class time, and 83% favored prohibiting cellphone and personal device usage for the entire school day, according to a National Education Association survey.
U.S. adults reported broad support for classroom cellphone restrictions in middle and high schools, but only a third of American adults said they support extending these bans for the whole school day, the Pew Research Center found.
Support for SB 139 wasn’t overwhelming among Oklahoma lawmakers, either. The state Senate passed the bill with a 30-15 vote, and the House approved it 51-39.
The House also passed a similar school cellphone ban, House Bill 1276, that would allow districts to opt out of the policy. SB 139 allows no such option until after a year.
“This will allow teachers to focus entirely on educating our kids while students can concentrate on learning as much as possible,” an author of both bills, Sen. Ally Seifried, R-Claremore, said. “After two years of hard work on this issue, I’m thrilled to see this legislation become law, and I’m confident students, parents and teachers will see immediate benefits once the new school year begins.”
HB 1276 is unlikely to advance in the Senate now that SB 139 has the governor’s signature, Seifried said.
The bill’s House author, Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid, called the measure a “try it before you buy it type of policy.”
“I appreciate Gov. Stitt signing SB 139 to remove the distractions of cellphones from our schools and give our kids their childhood back,” Caldwell said Tuesday.
The governor on Monday also signed into law a restriction on virtual school days. Senate Bill 758 will limit districts to using a maximum of two online instruction days per school year.
“Kids learn best in the classroom,” said Sen. Kristen Thompson, R-Edmond, who wrote the bill. “Virtual days have their place in emergencies, but we’ve seen them become a go-to solution in some districts — and that’s not fair to students or families. This bill strikes the right balance by preserving flexibility without compromising the quality of education.”
Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: [email protected].
Sarah Osofsky returned to school last year to earn her master’s degree in social work, hoping to give back to her community and find a job that would pay enough to survive Hawaiʻi’s high cost of living.
Now, less than two weeks away from graduation, the mother of two is struggling to find a position that can sustain her family.
Most social work jobs she’s seen in recent months offer salaries of $60,000 or less — enough to disqualify her from safety net programs like food stamps, but not enough to comfortably provide for her kids. She’s considered moving back to California where she has family who could support her, but she wants to stay in Hawaiʻi so her children can be near their dad.
“What I’m balancing right now is, do I take a low, low paying job that then I’ll qualify for services like food stamps and Medicaid,” Osofsky said, “or do I hold out and try to find those few and far between really good jobs that will make enough so I don’t qualify but I don’t need it.”
Osofsky’s struggle is a familiar one for working families in Hawaiʻi. In 2024, nearly 30% of Hawaiʻi households were living paycheck-to-paycheck and struggling to afford basic necessities like housing, child care and food, according to an annual count of the state’s ALICE families — an acronym for people who are asset limited, income constrained, and employed.
Like Osofsky, roughly 40% of these families considered leaving the state over the past year, according to a study from Aloha United Way.
While some reports indicate that more locals have been returning to Hawaiʻi in the last few years, the state’s high cost of living continues to drive some families away, straining the public education system and economy.
Earlier this year, the Department of Education said its kindergarten enrollment dropped from 13,000 in 2019 to nearly 10,800 this year, citing estimates that 20% of people leaving Hawaiʻi are school-aged kids. The department is now starting the process of consolidating small schools, although it hasn’t yet identified which campuses are at risk of closure.
A few years ago, state lawmakers grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic proposed a bold slate of reforms to improve the plight of working families: free school meals for all, universal access to preschool and paid family leave. But the state’s big plans for progress have resulted in incremental steps, and some families and advocates say change isn’t happening quickly enough.
Lawmakers this session created a working group to study paid family leave but failed to turn the yearslong proposal into law. The state expanded eligibility for preschool tuition subsidies and funded preschool construction but failed to address the ongoing shortage of early learning educators. And Senate Bill 1300 — considered one of the biggest wins for students this year — expanded access to free school meals but stopped short of providing them for all kids.
At the same time, uncertainty looms around the future of programs that rely on federal dollars to support working families, including school meals and early learning centers.
Amid the upheaval, state lawmakers were hesitant to pass big spending measures this year, opting instead to set aside $200 million to help Hawaiʻi prepare for federal funding cuts. But some advocates say now is exactly the time for the state to make a bigger investment in families.
“The state Legislature, and frankly, the counties, should be thinking, ‘Bad stuff is coming,’” said Deborah Zysman, executive director of Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network. “We don’t quite know what yet, but we should be thinking about how to take care of our own people.”
An Urgent Need For Child Care
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Osofsky worried about the social development of her son, who was just turning 2 when lockdown restrictions began. But when he began attending the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa Children’s Center later that year, Osofsky said, he received services for his speech delay and became comfortable making friends and recognizing letters.
But paying for preschool was a challenge, Osofsky said. The Preschool Open Doors program provides a state subsidy to help cover tuition, but her son was ineligible when he started because the program only covered 4-year-olds at the time. The program expanded to include 3-year-olds last year.
Hawaiʻi has pledged to offer preschool to all 3- and 4-year-olds by 2032. The Ready Keiki initiative, led by Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, currently estimates the state needs to add more than 330 classrooms in the next seven years to provide preschool to an additional 6,700 children.
While lawmakers successfully expanded access to tuition subsidies and funded more preschool construction this year, progress toward the state’s ambitious goal has slowed on other fronts.
One successful bill this session expands eligibility for preschool subsidies by including 2-year-olds and repealing the requirement that families must use the subsidy at a nationally accredited provider, which has created financial and administrative barriers for smaller programs in the past, Zysman said.
But the Department of Human Services is on track to spend only $20 million of its $50 million budget for preschool subsidies this year, said Scott Morishige, administrator of the department’s Benefit, Employment and Support Services Division.
To ramp up its spending, DHS is considering expanding the income eligibility to 500% of the federal poverty line. If DHS adopts the rules this summer, Morishige said, a family of four could make up to $184,000 annually and still be eligible for assistance, compared to the past income limit of $110,000.
The state budget sets aside $20 million to build more public preschool classrooms over the next three years. The state plans on opening 25 public preschool classrooms this fall and an additional 25 classrooms the following year, far less than previous estimates that Hawaiʻi could build 40-50 classrooms annually.
While the state would like to take a more aggressive approach to opening public preschool classrooms moving forward, Luke said, the Ready Keiki initiative is also relying on private providers and charter schools to help expand access. The state is starting larger construction projects, like standalone preschool centers, that could add seats more rapidly as they open in the next few years.
“There is an urgency for us to open as many preschool seats as we can,” she said.
But families’ demand for preschool could grow beyond what the state has anticipated if the federal government stops funding its own child care programs. Head Start, which relies on federal funding and serves roughly 2,800 children and pregnant mothers, is currently Hawaiʻi’s largest provider of early learning services, said Ryan Kusumoto, president and CEO of the nonprofit Parents And Children Together.
The Trump administration has previously threatened to cut funding entirely for Head Start, although the most recent version of the federal budget keeps program funding intact. Some Hawaiʻi Head Start programs are still waiting to receive confirmation for next year’s funding, and the recent closure of some regional offices could create backlogs in awarding this money, said Ben Naki, president of the Head Start Association of Hawaiʻi.
“There’s no existing infrastructure that can pick up those 2,800 kids,” Kusumoto said. “And we’re talking about kids who don’t have any other resources.”
First Steps For Free Meals
Since September, Christine Russo said paying for meals has become a greater challenge for her family as her twins joined her 10-year-old in attending school every day. She sets aside roughly $180 each month so her kids can purchase breakfast and lunch at school — a challenge for the public school teacher, whose husband is a retail store manager.
Russo’s kids don’t qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, but she said her family could still benefit from the ongoing push to bring back a pandemic-era program that made meals free for all students.
Lawmakers stopped short of funding a universal free meals program this year but took incremental steps by passing Senate Bill 1300. Starting next year, the state will provide free school meals to students who currently qualify for reduced-price lunch. The following year, eligibility for free school meals would be expanded to families making up to 300% of the federal poverty level, or roughly $110,000 for a family of four.
The bill appropriates $565,000 to provide more free school meals next year and an additional $3.4 million for the program’s expansion the following year. More than 68,000 students in the Department of Education qualified for free meals this year, and 10,000 qualified for reduced-price meals.
The bill also requires schools feed students who don’t have enough money to purchase lunch or already have meal debt. Students have accrued more than $105,000 in meal debt this school year, DOE communications director Nanea Ching said.
At Castle High School, junior Tayli Kahoopii said she receives free meals, but some of her friends don’t qualify. When someone doesn’t have enough money in their account to purchase lunch, the register makes a buzzing sound — loud enough to embarrass students and, in one instance, deter Kahoopii’s friend from trying to purchase meals for a week.
“On a daily basis, you see kids getting their food taken away, and there’s really nothing that they can do about it,” Kahoopii said, adding that it’s difficult for students to learn and focus when they don’t have access to food during the school day.
Rep. Scot Matayoshi, who has introduced bills for the past three years proposing free school meals, said SB1300 is an important step. But he still plans on advocating for universal free school meals in the coming years, especially since it would reduce the administrative barriers schools and families face in determining who qualifies for free meals.
Daniela Spoto, director of food equity at Hawaiʻi Appleseed, said providing all students with free school meals could also become more important with federal funding on the line. Proposed federal cuts to a program allowing schools in low-income areas to provide free meals to all children could impact 52 schools and more than 27,000 kids in Hawaiʻi, according to estimates from the Food Research and Action Center.
“It should be a staple for our schools to have free school lunch,” said Castle junior Haliʻa Tom-Jardine, who will begin qualifying for free school meals next year. “It should be a right.”
‘Bad Things Are Coming’
During the pandemic, people saw lawmakers step up and meet the needs of working families through federal initiatives like the child tax credit and free school meals, said Kayla Keehu-Alexander, vice president of community impact at Aloha United Way. Now, she said, state lawmakers need to do the same during times of uncertainty.
“If we don’t start making some big policy changes around the cost of living, around housing, we could potentially be looking at a larger out-migration than we’ve had in the past,” she said.
Hawaiʻi is already starting to see the possible impacts of out-migration on its schools and economy. While some people are coming back to Hawaiʻi to raise families, Keehu-Alexander said, it’s unclear if they’re joining the workforce in areas with the worst staffing shortages, like education or healthcare.
Looking ahead to next year, Zysman said she would like to see a successful bill establishing paid family leave in Hawaiʻi, which would provide caregivers paid time off to care for their loved ones. Lawmakers have failed to pass a bill for several years, although they did approve a resolution last month establishing a working group that will study how to implement paid family leave over the next year.
Zysman added that she’s concerned about the long-term impacts of the historic tax cut lawmakers passed last year. While she supports cuts that can make it more affordable for people to stay in Hawaiʻi, she said, she’s worried that tax breaks for the wealthiest will make it harder for the state to fund programs that can keep working families afloat.
“In my gut, I feel like bad things are coming,” Zysman said, “and we should have acted more preemptively.”
This story was originally published on Honolulu Civil Beat. Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.
IHEC‘s report,Towards a Future UK International Higher Education Strategy: Resilience, Purpose and Precision, released in April 2025, describes accurate data and timely insights as “the lifeblood” of an effective international education strategy.
The Commission is calling on the government develop a digital data portal for international student information, accessible to universities and relevant public bodies.
Its vision is a significant leap from the fragmented systems the sector currently relies on – where data is outdated and siloed across agencies.
Stakeholders frequently point out that UK policy often trails real-world data by nearly two years.
The Commission envisions a secure portal compiling data from various sources – Home Office visa issuance, HESA enrolments, accommodation, and health service usage – tracking, almost in real time, where international students are coming from and enrolling.
Imagine a world where universities can instantly access up-to-date visa grant statistics by country, and local councils can anticipate the number of international students arriving in their area.
With real-time insights at their fingertips, IHEC suggests that institutions, policymakers, and stakeholders could plan proactively – enhancing housing, support services, and infrastructure.
“A system like this is entirely within our competence to establish,” according to IHEC.
This isn’t the only tool the Commission has in its sights. As part of its ambitions, it also advocates for a market intelligence platform that would equip the UK with the insights needed to stay ahead of global competitors.
“Via a public-private partnership (perhaps a tender to specialist data firms), we could build a system that aggregates data on international education demand worldwide – including demographics, economic indicators, competitor country trends, search engine, and agent application data – to predict future demand patterns,” outlined the report.
Via a public-private partnership (perhaps a tender to specialist data firms), we could build a system that aggregates data on international education demand worldwide IHEC
The platform would answer key questions like: “Which emerging markets are gaining interest?” or “What’s the projected demand for STEM Masters over the next five years?”
“The sector must have access to better and more timely data about what is happening in international recruitment markets, as well as how this is playing out at institutional and sector levels, to more effectively address challenges and opportunities,” asserted Chris Skidmore, IHEC chair and former UK universities minister.
With this intelligence, the Commission hopes the UK can spot opportunities early and respond to risks before they grow. It should also include an open-source competitor tracker – comparing performance across countries on things like visa wait times, tuition fees, and scholarship availability – so the UK can see how it stacks up and stay competitive.
To steer these efforts, the Commission recommends establishing a public-private sector International Education Data and Insight Taskforce, made up of statisticians and analysts from various government departments, as well as industry experts and leaders from the growing number of private sector companies that provide sophisticated data about current and potential future trends.
The Commission names Enroly, Studyportals, IDP and QS as key players doing valuable work in this area.
IHEC’s full report ‘Towards a Future UK International Higher Education Strategy: Resilience, Purpose and Precision’ is available here.
Over 5,000 higher education jobs in Canada have been cut since the government clamped down on study permit numbers – with Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec the hardest hit.
The thousands of job cuts tracked by a higher education expert are just those that have been made public, with the possibility that there have been many more.
Institutions are also having to consolidate the programs they offer, as billions of dollars worth of budget cuts make their mark.
More than 5,000 jobs have been lost in the post-secondary education sector in Canada since the federal government first imposed a study permit cap in January 2024, according to research from higher education consultant Ken Steele. Further restrictions – capping study permits at a scant 473,000 – were introduced in September.
But the cuts collated by Steele are just the ones that have been made public. A number of institutions are not disclosing their drops in employment in teaching and administration.
Slashing jobs in education – due to the government’s own actions – is a huge mistake, Steele said.
“The unilateral imposition of extreme, abrupt, student visa caps have thrown Canadian higher education into crisis, decimated our reputation abroad and precipitously destroyed one of our major ‘export’ industries,” he told The PIE News.
For the past year, Steele has been tracking reported job losses at universities and colleges across the country. As expected, programs that relied heavily on international students were forced to make the biggest cuts.
According to Steele’s data, Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, has eliminated almost 450 positions. The University of Windsor, also in Ontario, has reduced employment by 157 spots.
The total of 5,267 cuts across the country almost certainly underreports the actual job losses. “Many institutions are keeping quiet about their cuts, including the Ontario private colleges that were partnering with public colleges,” he noted.
It’s not just jobs that are being slashed. Post-secondary institutions have been forced to eliminate programs and reduce spending.
Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, appears to lead the way in getting rid of programs. It has suspended 50 fields of study, including advanced live digital media, construction project management and retirement residence management. In all of Canada, Ontario colleges are the top eight for suspending programs, accounting for two-thirds of the 453 cuts.
The financial hit is significant. “So far, I have tracked CAD$2.2 billion in budget hits at post-secondary schools across the country,” Steele said. This includes last year’s cuts as well as planned reductions for next year.
If Canada reopened its doors tomorrow, it would likely take until at least 2030 to recover the international enrolment momentum we had just two years ago Ken Steele, education consultant
Ontario was most reliant on international revenues and has been hardest hit by the study permit cap. Steele’s figures suggest that 70% of the cuts have struck that province, with British Columbia and Quebec also suffering. The remaining seven provinces faced more modest losses.
In Vancouver last month, dozens of staff and faculty at several post-secondary institutions staged a protest of the study permit cap. Taryn Thompson, vice-president of the Vancouver Community College Faculty Association, said there have been 60 layoffs at her school alone, with more expected in the coming months.
The big question is: Will the new federal government ease the cap? The issue of post-secondary funding was hardly raised at all during the election campaign, overshadowed by concerns about Trump’s threats to annex Canada.
There’s also the concern about restoring Canada’s reputation following the study permit debacle.
“If Canada reopened its doors tomorrow, it would likely take until at least 2030 to recover the international enrolment momentum we had just two years ago,” warned Steele.
The latest report from the Office for Students (OfS) paints a stark picture of mounting financial pressures across the higher education sector.
The analysis suggests that 43% of institutions now forecast a deficit for 2024/25, in contrast with optimistic projections made by institutions that had looked to an improvement in financial performance for the year.
The key driver is lower-than-expected international student recruitment, according to Philippa Pickford, director of regulation at the OfS.
“Our independent analysis, drawn from data institutions have submitted, once again starkly sets out the challenges facing the sector. The sector is forecasting a third consecutive year of decline in financial performance, with more than four in ten institutions expecting a deficit this year,” she said.
“We remain concerned that predictions of future growth are often based on ambitious student recruitment that cannot be achieved for every institution. Our analysis shows that if the number of student entrants is lower than forecast in the coming years, the sector’s financial performance could continue to deteriorate, leaving more institutions facing significant financial challenges,” said Pickford.
We remain concerned that predictions of future growth are often based on ambitious student recruitment that cannot be achieved for every institution Philippa Pickford, Office for Students
Total forecasts continue to predict growth of 26% in UK student entrants and 19.5% in international student entrants between 2023/24 and 2027/28. However, in its report, the OfS said that “at an aggregate level, providers’ forecasts for recruitment growth continue to be too ambitious”.
Speaking to The PIENews on the topic, David Pilsbury, secretary to the International Higher Education Commission (IHEC), said that university target setting is, and has been for many years, “disconnected from reality”.
“There are not enough people that really know what their recruitment potential really is and how to deliver it, not enough people who push back on finance directors and university executive groups that see overseas recruitment as a tap that can simply be turned on to fill the funding gap, and not enough people developing the compelling business cases that put in place the infrastructure necessary to deliver outcomes,” he said.
IHEC recently released a landmark report urging action across several areas of UK higher education, including international student recruitment.
Pilsbury described the need to build “coalitions of the willing” between universities and with private providers – of data, admissions services, recruitment and beyond – to drive innovation, execute new models and establish different outcomes for the UK sector. The IHEC report warned that “failing to secure the future of international higher education in the UK would be an act of national self-harm”.
Total international student enrolment in the UK fell from 760,000 in 2022/23 to 730,000 last year. Currency devaluations in markets such as Nigeria and Ghana contributed to the decline, with Nigerian student levels dropping most dramatically by 23%.
Pickford does not expect to see multiple university closures in the short-term, but said that the “medium-term pressures are significant, complex and ongoing”.
“Many institutions are working hard to reduce costs. This often requires taking difficult decisions, but doing so now will help secure institutions’ financial health for the long term. This work should continue to be done in a way that maintains course quality and ensures effective support for students,” she said.
“Universities and colleges should also continue to explore opportunities for growth to achieve long-term sustainability. But some superficially attractive options, such as rapid growth in subcontractual partnerships, require caution,” Pickford warned.
Against a challenging operating environment, the OfS said it welcomes the work of Universities UK’s taskforce on efficiency and transformation.
The taskforce was announced earlier this year and was set up to drive efficiency and cost-saving across universities in England through collaborative solutions, including the exploration of mergers and acquisitions.
The report comes as UK stakeholders brace for the government’s imminent immigration white paper which is expected to include restrictions on visas from some countries and also changes to the Graduate Route.
