How one school district is grappling with ICEView in browser [link removed]

**Weekly Update**

**A newsletter from The Hechinger Report**

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**In this week's edition:** As students in New Haven, Connecticut, are detained and fears of deportation intensify, local schools are fighting back [link removed]. Universities and colleges try to wrestle back their message after plummeting public confidence, falling enrollment and a year of political attacks [link removed]. Plus, New Hampshire — where most voucher money has gone to Christian schools — may be a harbinger for universal school choice [link removed].

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Wilbur Cross High School serves about 1,700 students in New Haven, Connecticut. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report

****How one school district is grappling with ICE coming to town****

“They took her, they took her, they took her.”  

Those were some of the words Assistant Principal Cora Muñoz could discern while on the phone with the guardian of one of her students. As the caller sobbed and struggled to speak, Muñoz realized that immigration enforcement agents had detained a kid from Wilbur Cross, the high school she helps lead. 

Again.

There was a reason why Muñoz was a go-to contact for the student and her guardian: She — and New Haven public schools more broadly — have worked hard to earn the trust of immigrant families in their diverse district, even as the second Trump administration has made it easier for immigration officers to enter schools and launched a mass deportation campaign.

The district’s teachers and administrators have nurtured deep relationships with immigrant-serving organizations and helped kids access resources — attorneys, social workers, food — when needed. They’ve hosted sessions to inform students about their rights, and sent home cards with legal information in case of an encounter with immigration officers. And when the worst has happened — when someone’s child or parent has been detained, which has occurred over and over in recent months — they have taken immediate action, writing letters in support of the family member’s freedom and raising money alongside a larger coalition of advocates trying to bring that person home. 

“In these moments where it’s hard, you show up,” said Muñoz, “and you do what you can.”

Yet nothing has been able to entirely snuff out the fear of deportation inside the city’s schools, say students and educators. That may have contributed to a decline this October in the number of English language learner students enrolling; their numbers dropped by more than 2,000, or nearly 3.8 percent, across Connecticut between fall 2024 and fall 2025, and by hundreds — or 7.3 percent — in New Haven, with many immigrant families who were expected to return to school simply disappearing. 

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**This week's newsletter is sponsored by: **

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Alumni Ventures (a venture firm for individuals) supports companies improving teaching and learning through AI, personalization, and expanded access. We offer early access to education-focused companies [link removed] shaping the future of learning, plus:

• Curated opportunities to support education startups
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****Their value attacked and funding cut, universities and colleges start fighting back****

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A narrator speaks over images of busy cityscapes, children playing in a field and ominous scenes of natural disasters and civil unrest.

“There’s no sugarcoating it,” the deep voice warns. “America’s future is under attack.”

Its salvation: higher education, personified by young people shown listening attentively in classrooms and busy at work in high-tech labs.

“College,” the speaker concludes with the heroic inflection of a movie cowboy: “Proud sponsor of America at its best.”

This 60-second public service spot is part of a small but growing response by the higher education industry to more than a decade of plummeting public confidence and falling enrollment followed by a year of political attacks against which insiders and advocates concede it has until now been mostly silent.

“We have let the narrative take on a life of its own,” said Tamalyn Powell, senior vice president of higher education practice at the advertising agency BVK, which developed the campaign.

That’s been true not only since the start of the second Trump administration — which cut billions of dollars in federal research funding and cracked down on diversity policies and international students — but before then, when state legislatures were imposing their own restrictions and public support was already plunging.

Now the sector is peering over the top of the trenches and launching initiatives like this “Proud Sponsor” campaign in the hope of reclaiming the message about itself. 

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**Trump’s national school voucher program could mean a boom in Christian education**

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New Hampshire — where most voucher money has gone to Christian schools — may be a harbinger for universal school choice.

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“I think these programs are the biggest change in K-12 education since Brown v. Board of Ed.” [link removed]

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****Reading list****

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Educating teachers to use AI without harming the planet [link removed]

TEACH-AI aims to help future educators use AI in an environmentally conscious way and to teach lessons on climate change

Young, employed — and unhappy [link removed]

Mysterious spike in misery among 18-22 year-old workers

Tracking Trump: His actions on education [link removed]

The president is working to eliminate the Education Department and fighting ‘woke’ ideology in schools. A week-by-week look at what he’s done

Homeless kids get special treatment at Boston-area child care center [link removed]

States and cities offering more services for young children facing housing instability

OPINION: After studying early childhood education for decades, I have some advice for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani [link removed]

He’s creating the first large-scale child care entitlement for 2-year-olds, but lessons from the field must be heeded

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