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Two recent stories by reporters here at The 74 demonstrate the ongoing ripple effects of the Trump administration’s massive deportation campaign. One deals with money, the other with home.
My colleague Linda Jacobson detailed how empty desks are adding up, whether it’s students who are absent from school, families who have been detained or others who’ve left their districts — or fled the country — on their own.
The Trump administration has offered to limit immigration enforcement near schools in negotiations with Democrats, but district leaders say they’re already facing budget cuts because of high absenteeism and lost enrollment. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)
States fund districts based on per-pupil enrollment, and in California, that dollar figure comes from daily average attendance. In Minnesota, where immigration enforcement actions turned deadly in January, the state requires districts to drop students from the rolls if they’ve been absent for 15 straight days. Unless an emergency exemption to the rule is granted, one district outside Minneapolis is facing a $1 million hit to its $51 million budget.
“I remember walking in the hallways going, ‘Holy God, where are all the kids?’ ” an employee in another Minnesota district told Linda. “It was eerie.”
Meanwhile, Jo Napolitano looked at what happens when the parents go missing, specifically after being detained or deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Jo reports that for their children, thousands of whom are U.S. citizens, this abrupt upheaval often means removal from home and school.
Some can find themselves, brand-new passports in hand, being sent to their parents’ birth country, which may be totally unfamiliar, or to live with family or friends — unless those adults’ citizenship status is also precarious and they may be too afraid to take them in. An unlucky number are placed in foster care and some are just left alone.
“We’ve heard about 15- and 16-year-olds living by themselves for several weeks because their parents were detained and they had no idea where they were,” one advocate said. “ICE was not checking to make sure they were OK. These are U.S. citizen kids.”
Click here and here to read the full stories.
In the news
‘Black Arrows’ coming to a school near you. The sleek, dark-colored drones can dart across fields at 100 mph, punch through windows and bowl over assailants. They aren’t being deployed to Ukraine or the Middle East, but to neutralize school shooters. | Wall Street Journal 🔒
The battle over homeschooling regulations in Connecticut has intensified after the stepfather of a homeschooled 12-year-old was charged with sexual assault this month in connection with her death. It was the second death of a homeschooled student in the state in the last five months and followed the 2025 discovery of an adult man who told authorities that his stepmother had held him captive for decades under the guise of homeschooling. | CT Mirror
Suspensions are down markedly in the country’s largest school district, but New York City school officials are not sure why. From July to December 2025, schools handed out nearly 9,200 suspensions, 8% fewer than in the same period in 2024. The decline included a nearly 22% drop in long-term superintendent suspensions. | Chalkbeat
And you thought human drivers were hard to train. The National Transportation Safety Board has launched an investigation into a driverless car that passed a stopped Texas school bus last month, just the latest of many such incidents. As of January, Austin Independent School District confirmed that Waymo vehicles had committed 24 violations, prompting the district to ask the company to cease all operations on school day mornings and afternoons. | KVUE
A 2021 opera by a groundbreaking Finnish composer about the most American of tragedies — a school shooting — has come to New York City’s Metropolitan Opera. Populated by 13 characters, Innocence captures multiple aspects of the horrific event and its aftermath “with brutal honesty and abundant compassion,” making it “an early contender for one of this century’s great operas.” | The New York Times
The Education Department announced Monday that it was rescinding Obama- and Biden-era agreements with five school districts and one college that were meant to advance LGBTQ+ student inclusion. The administration said the agreements “impermissibly expanded the scope of Title IX to enforce discrimination based on ‘gender identity,’ not biological sex.” | K-12 Dive
ChatGPT reportedly assisted school shooter. The state attorney general is investigating the AI chatbot’s alleged role in last year’s Florida State University shooting. The tool developed by OpenAI reportedly told the shooter how to take the safety off of his shotgun three minutes before he opened fire outside and inside FSU’s busy Student Union, killing two and wounding five. | Florida Phoenix
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