September is coming and so is the start of a new school year. This year, there will be almost 37,000 “unaccompanied” alien minors who will be enrolling in public school in the United States. These kids will require special Limited English Proficient (LEP) classes conducted in Spanish, or in other languages indigenous to Central American, as well as other taxpayer funded services, such as free and reduced school meals. FAIR has documented these costs in previous reports (Utah, Nevada, Maryland). The per pupil cost for unaccompanied minors is likely to be even higher than the average LEP student, since the recent illegal aliens of school age who came in the recent surge have had little to no previous schooling. Once again the costs of federal government’s failed immigration policies are borne at the local level, and the nation’s public school system is where the costs are most visible.
Here is FAIR’s estimate of the cost of educating unaccompanied alien minors by state.