Two of Ms. Ocasio’s daughters attended PS 46 this year: Junie, in first grade, and Olive, in kindergarten. The new students were their classmates, something June pointed out on their walk home one day when she recognized a girl with a family holding a sign asking for money for food. The shelter meals were terrible and made some of the children sick. Mrs. Ocasio bought the family a bucket of chicken. Then June said, “But Mom, you can’t buy all my friends buckets of chicken.” Ms. Ocasio was herself homeless and lived in a shelter when her daughters were young. After nine years on a waiting list, she secured an apartment at Whitman Houses, the public housing complex designed for PS 46. No, she couldn’t buy everyone dinner, but she could help asylum seekers access the benefits they were entitled to. .
Not everyone was so welcoming. Last month, after a series of neighborhood dust-ups over complaints of panhandling, loitering and littering, more than 200 angry residents packed a town hall around the Hall Street shelter complex where the Rodríguezes had been placed. With nearly 1,000 family members and 3,000 singles, it is currently the largest concentration of immigrants seeking asylum in New York. Most of the speakers’ ire was directed at elected officials over the number of immigrants being housed, but some neighbors shared ways to support the newcomers. The overwhelming message, however, was that immigrants were a burden on the neighborhood and residents wanted out.
But that wasn’t the sentiment of families whose children were already at PS 46, though it’s part of the community most directly affected by the newcomers. As stabilizing as schools can be for newcomers, the influx—especially in the middle of the year—of so many students with complex needs, often severe trauma, and little prior schooling can also be very destabilizing for the school communities they join.
The Rodríguezes knew the pressure asylum seekers put on the school and the city, and were surprised by how supportive parents continued to be. Mr. Rodriguez was willing to help. He volunteered at food distributions. He learned to navigate the city’s online scheduling system and began securing appointments, which are required for other immigrants to obtain city IDs known as NYC IDs. When new families arrived at the shelter, she acted as a liaison with a local mutual aid group to secure coats and shoes in the sizes they needed. If the Rodríguezes stayed at the school, Ms. Ocasio knew she wanted to recruit Mr. Rodríguez for the PTA In many ways, meeting the material needs of the asylum seekers was the easy part.
“I wish I could focus on educating the children”
On a Tuesday in mid-February, some of the new second-graders knelt on a rug decorated with the seven continents and tried to get words out. Rag. Delay. Bag. Their English-speaking colleagues sat at tables quietly reading chapter books, one of them engrossed in a thick novel. Later, during a math lesson on “grouping,” the Rodriguezes’ youngest child, Andres, went to the board. He had learned the addition strategy at his school in Peru. His classmates applauded and, imitating the other children, he did a victory dance in the universal language of the computer game Fortnite.
