Two of Ocasio's daughters attended PS 46 this year: Junie, a first-grader, and Olive, a kindergartener. The freshmen were their classmates, and on the way home one day, Junie noticed a family of girls holding a sign asking for money to buy food and pointed them out. The food at the shelter was awful, and some of the kids were getting sick. Ocasio bought the family a bucket of chicken. Afterward, Junie said, “But Mom, I can't buy a bucket of chicken for all my friends.” Ocasio herself was homeless and lived in a shelter when her daughters were young. After nine years on the waiting list, she secured an apartment in Whitman Houses, the public housing complex designated for PS 46. Of course, she couldn't buy dinner for everyone, but she could help asylum seekers get the benefits they were entitled to.
Not everyone has been so welcoming. After a series of disturbances in the neighborhood last month over complaints about panhandling, loitering and littering, more than 200 angry residents gathered for a town hall about the Hall Street shelter complex where the Rodriguezes are being housed. It houses about 1,000 families and 3,000 single people and is currently the largest concentration of migrants seeking asylum in New York City. While most of the speakers' anger was directed at elected officials over the number of immigrants being held, some neighbors shared ways they can support the new arrivals. But the overwhelming message was that immigrants are a burden on the neighborhood and residents want them out.
However, this is not the case for families with children already attending PS 46, despite being part of the community most directly affected by the new students. While school provides stability for new students, the influx of many students with complex needs, who have often experienced significant trauma, and who have had little prior schooling (especially in the middle of the school year) can also be highly destabilizing for the school community into which they enter.
The Rodriguezes were aware of the pressure asylum seekers were putting on the school and the city, and were surprised that parents continued to support them. Mr. Rodriguez was happy to help. He volunteered at food distribution centers. He learned to use the city's online reservation system and began securing appointments that other immigrants needed to get the city's identification cards, called NYC IDs. As new families arrived at the shelter, he served as a liaison with local mutual aid groups to ensure they had the coats and shoes they needed in the right size. If the Rodriguezes would stay at the school, Ms. Ocasio was willing to recruit Mr. Rodriguez to the PTA. In many ways, meeting the material needs of asylum seekers was easy.
“I wish I could focus on my children's education.”
On a Tuesday in mid-February, some of the rising second-graders knelt on a rug depicting the seven continents and practiced how to pronounce the words: Rag. Lag. Bag. His English-speaking classmates sat at tables, quietly reading chapter books, one of them engrossed in a thick novel. Later, Rodriguez's youngest son, Andres, stood at the whiteboard during a “group” math lesson, learning addition strategies at his Peruvian school. His classmates applauded, and he imitated the other kids, doing a victory dance in the universal language of the computer game “Fortnite.”