Maria Leaf
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON– Of the close to 500 children that have come to Montgomery County, Md from the US-Mexico border so far this year, only a fraction have been registered for classes in the Montgomery County Public Schools for the upcoming academic year.
That’s according to Margarita Bohorquez, a supervisor with the district. “We have 64 students that we’ve enrolled in the month in July, 3 of which were processed through the office of refugee resettlement,” she said.
The first day of classes in the district is August 30th.
Montgomery county is the 11th highest receiving county in the nation for the children crossing the border according to Gillian Huebner with the county’s department of Health and Human Services. She says it’s largely because this is where their families are located. Huebner says there are a couple of reasons why these kids haven’t been enrolled yet.
“Part of this is because they’re getting their bearings straight, another piece of it is because so many of them come with significant debts that they have to repay to those who helped them cross the border”.
To help get the process moving, the county announced at a meeting on Thursday that it is going to hire two new coordinators. One will work in the school district, the other with the county’s department of Health and Human Services.
Both will help guide kids and their families through the process of registering for school and for other community services such as childcare, legal, food and housing assistance officials said.
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