Mayor Eric Adams insisted on Tuesday that migrant children will not be forced to change schools under a new rule that recently arrived families must vacate shelter after 60 days.
City Hall announced its latest limitation on the length of migrant shelter stays on Monday, following previous moves to cap adult new arrivals’ time in shelters first at 60 days, and later at 30 days. Migrants who are unable to find housing outside city shelters within the mandated timespan must apply for another bed at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, which serves as the city’s migrant intake facility.
The mayor made the comments Tuesday, when amNewYork Metro asked him about criticism from homeless advocates that the 60-day policy would be disruptive to school-aged migrant children. They argue the rule may force youngsters to travel much further to their schools or change schools altogether.
“We’re not going to have those children change schools,” Hizzoner responded. “We want to stabilize their education, so we’re not going to have those children change schools.”
The administration introduced its latest restriction on shelter stays to make room for additional newcomers. With over 64,000 migrants currently living in city shelters, and the continued lack of substantial aid from the federal government, Adams says the city is out of space.
The mayor’s office is also currently attempting to suspend the city’s longstanding right-to-shelter, which guarantees a shelter placement for any person in need.
When pressed by a reporter later in the news conference on what would happen if a migrant family’s new shelter placement is much further away from their child’s current school, Mayor Adams said he and DOE Chancellor David Banks will “make sure” the child’s education is not interrupted.
“My job as the mayor and the chancellor is to make sure that no matter what means are needed, that no child will have their education interrupted,” the mayor said. “That’s my commitment to the city. Whatever means we have to do to ensure that, that’s what we’re going to do.”
The mayor’s chief of staff, Camille Joseph Varlack, added that due to the “intensive” case-management paired with the rule, the process of figuring out where a family is going to move in the shelter system will take place ahead of their 60th day.
She added that if the family chooses to keep their child in the same school, the city will work with them to map out a transportation option ahead of the date they change shelters.
‘It’s not like the bus magically shows up’
But even with the mayor’s commitment to limit disruptions to migrant children, advocates still voiced concerns about the policy’s potential impact.
Josh Goldfein, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society, said that when families have gotten new shelter placements in the past, it has sometimes taken weeks for the DOE to set up transportation to their schools.
“It’s not like the bus magically shows up in the new place on the following school day,” Goldfein said. “There’s a certain amount of time that it takes for them to work out the new transportation, so you’re building in a certain number of days where kids are not going to school every time this happens.”
Even if busing is organized for the migrant children in question, Goldfein said, they could be spending much of their day in transit, depending on how far they are from their schools.
“You’re talking about parents being faced with a choice between having their kids ride the bus for hours and hours in order to maintain continuity of their education,” he said, “or switching schools and eliminating all of that travel time, but having a disruption to not only the kids’ education, but the school’s ability to manage who’s in the school building.”
