NYC parents fear migrant surge in schools

 Manhattan parents were concerned about overcrowding in their children’s already strained schools a day after City Hall warned of an influx of “thousands” of migrants in New York City public schools.

“The kids that are already there are crammed…… It was 28 kids in my daughter’s classroom last year, and that was the second grade. I’m worried that this year it could be 30-plus, you know, 40,” said Maria Blanco, a Chelsea elementary school parent.

Some 18,500 children in the city’s shelter system are enrolled in public schools for the upcoming year, but in addition to migrants, that figure also includes homeless children, according to the city.

It does not account for asylum-seeking kids who have not yet registered for school – a number which will grow sharply in the coming weeks amid a “very large” expected influx, officials warned Tuesday.

Many migrant families are being housed in the heart of Manhattan, which has resulted in the borough’s Community Education Council District 2 seeing about 1,200 migrant kids in its roughly 40 schools which span from the Battery to the Upper East Side, according to CED 2 leaders.

Blanco, 41, sends her 7-year-old daughter to PS 033 Chelsea Prep.  She will be in the 3rd grade when she starts school on September 7th. 

Maria Blanco, whose 7-year-old daughter attends PS 033 Chelsea Prep, is concerned about swelling class sizes due to the migrant crisis in New York City.

Robert Miller

Blanco is worried that the school will have more problems this academic year because she anticipates there will more migrant students in the already “crammed” classrooms. 

“There will be more kids coming. Where will they be placed? It’s gonna be worse. Every time I see the news, there are five more buses coming,” the mom said Wednesday.

“And, it’s not only adults, you have kids. They will have to go to school.”

“There were more than 20 kids last year. I’m pretty sure it’s going to double that amount this year,” she said, referring to migrants’ kids who were sent to Chelsea Prep. “We have no space.”

Blanco was concerned that more migrant children would result in larger classroom sizes and less individual attention from teachers.

“When it comes to one-on-one with the teacher, it’s going to be impossible, especially for the special needs kids. That teacher might now have ten more kids that need her attention.”

She said the migrant kids speak several languages because “they are coming from all over the world. Now, it’s like we’ve got to stop for these kids.”

Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday had mentioned that the Department of Education would be setting aside funds to provide English as a Second Language instruction to the new students, who largely don’t speak English, a job he encouraged any Spanish-speaking New Yorker to apply for.

“We have been successful through the chancellor and through the entire DOE team, we have been successful in absorbing those young people to make sure no child is going without education in our school systems,” Adams said Wednesday during an alarmist press briefing where he predicted the cost of the city’s migrant crisis was set to soar to $12 billion by 2025.

“We don’t have the exact number because it’s a continuing, growing and moving number.”

Migrant families standing outside of the shelter at the Roosevelt Hotel on June 1, 2023.

Aristide Economopoulos

Mayor Adams has said the migrant crisis may cost the city $12 billion over the next three years.

William Farrington

Blanco’s daughter was set to enter the school’s Gifted and Talented program, but the mom admitted she was “afraid she might fall back; I’m worried about that.”

The proud mom said she pays for additional tutors to keep her performing “at the right level in reading, math and science,” an expense that was sometimes hard to meet.

“I’m worried the cost might go up and I can’t afford it but it’s definitely necessary if she is not going to get the one-on-one attention that she needs. I have to continue that but if the cost goes up, it’s going to be a problem. I live in NYCHA housing,” Blanco said.

“This situation is horrible. I’m all for second chances but this is too much. They need to find a solution. The city needs to find a solution,” she said.

Blanco said that Chelsea Prep may have double the amount of migrant children attending this year — despite having “no space.”

Robert Miller

A day earlier, a father who also sends his daughter to a Chelsea elementary school echoed Blanco’s concerns.

“Teachers are already overloaded with the amount of kids in the class now, so are they going to hire more teachers? Or are the teachers going to have double the amount of kids in the class?,” said Anthony, 30.

Anthony’s daughter was set to attend 2nd grade at PS 340 when school resumes in September.

“I understand that kids need to be in school. They’re still kids no matter where they are from, however, I hope this doesn’t take away from the already lack of funding we have,” he said.

Lori, 27, has a son that will be starting school in the district this fall. She told The Post she was worried about the lack of information she had been receiving.

Migrants outside of the Roosevelt Hotel on July 31, 2023.

Anthony Behar/Sipa USA

“I found out from a couple of parents that they are expecting a large number of extra kids to attend the schools in this district.” 

“Why hasn’t this been talked about sooner? School starts in a few weeks and I’ve heard very little information on what’s going to happen. I’m worried. It’s my first time sending my child to school, and I as the parent, don’t know what to expect. How will I prepare him for what to expect?,” Lori said.

“Is it going to be extra classes? Extra kids to each teacher? Will there still be after-school programs? Any details, any at all from the city would be great.” 

CEC 2 Council Member Craig Slutzkin, 48, said the district was set to adopt a resolution Wednesday that calls on City Hall to conduct a citywide survey to account for all migrant kids and their needs, information that he said had been “hard to get.”

“[I]t is our understanding that the Department of Education has reached out to some of such families but not in a widespread, data-driven manner,” the resolution read.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/nyc-parents-fear-migrant-surge-in-schools-this-situation-is-horrible/

Safe drug sites say they’re saving lives — but they’re encouraging slow deaths

 Holy moly! The Biden administration is talking law and order.

Well, maybe not the whole Biden administration — maybe just the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams.

The prosecutor says two government-sanctioned hard-drug-addict shoot-up boutiques operating in New York City are illegal — and hints that he might just slap a padlock on them.

For sure, nobody’s talking up a resurrection of the Rockefeller drug laws. (More’s the pity.)

But it’s a baby-step — sort of like a drug dog in the White House if the Bidenistas suddenly got serious about cocaine.

It’s rare when someone of Williams’ standing suddenly notices that New York City is in open violation of federal, state and local drug laws.

Williams has cast a stink-eye on OnePoint NY, a not-for-profit (what else?) that operates what reportedly are the nation’s only two “supervised injection sites” — one in Harlem and one in Washington Heights.

Consider them bring-your-own-substance comfort stations for addicts worried about overdosing: Show up, shoot up and if it looks like things are going ‘round the bend there will be someone there to, er, intervene.

OnePoint says it has saved 1,000 lives (but without offering long-term survival stats, which would be helpful), and if that’s the case, fine.

People lying on the sidewalk outside of the OnePoint NY supervised injection site in East Harlem on August 9, 2023.

Stephen Yang

OnePoint NY operates sites in East Harlem and Washington Heights.

Stephen Yang

Yet its mission statement is a little weird: “We seek to combat stigma and invite people who use drugs to participate meaningfully in society, instead of pushing them to the margin.”

Really, if more addicts fretted about stigma and societal participation — to say nothing of overdosing — there likely would be fewer addicts around to de-marginalize in the first place.

Ditto if more prosecutors paid attention to the open-air narcotics bazaars in public places all across the five boroughs. And not just the five boroughs.

Which is where Damian Williams comes in. He is, he tells the New York Times, a prosecutor; the sites are illegal and therefore legit targets for a crackdown.

And Williams is, of course, absolutely correct — even as his observation has given the creeping fantods to the usual suspects.

Including, for example state Sen. Gustavo Rivera of the Bronx and Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal of Manhattan’s Upper West Side (where else?).

They note, correctly, that OD deaths are up — but add that “substance use disorder (ahem, drug addiction) is often criminalized and stigmatized instead of being treated as a public health emergency.”

But while public health is very much a priority — what is OnePoint, if not a health initiative? — “criminalization” has become yesterday’s news.

For example, The Post last year tracked 2021-22 drug enforcement numbers in New York City and found them to be down dramatically in the wake of “bail reform” — just as ODs rose sharply.

Coincidence? Correlation? Causation?

OnePoint NY has claimed to save 1,000 lives since opening.

AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File

The illegal narcotics universe is murky — but you’d have to walk around the city blindfolded not to see that every illegal drug imaginable is available just about everywhere — yet there are no handcuffs in sight, anywhere.

Clearly, the Rivera-Rosenthal anti-enforcement trope is patronizing nonsense — as is OnePoint’s no-such-thing-as-a-bad-junkie approach to the illegal narcotics trade.

And make no mistake — a trade it is, sucking untold sums from demoralized and near-defeated city neighborhoods while leaving naked misery behind.

Stalls for injecting drugs in a OnePoint NY safe injection site.

AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Now along comes Damian Williams to hint — however faintly — that maybe enough has been enough. And good for him.

It ain’t handcuffs, but it’s a start.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/safe-drug-sites-say-theyre-saving-lives-but-theyre-encouraging-slow-deaths/

Morphic cut to Hold from Buy by Stifel

 Target to $61 from $69

https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=MORF&p=d

Southern Border Cameras Capture Heavily Armed Cartel Illegally Entering US

 A little over two months ago, the Mexican TV channel Milenio published shocking footage of a cartel member wielding a "military-grade grenade launcher" in Matamoros, a city in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas that borders Brownsville, Texas.

Now Fox News border correspondent Bill Melugin has obtained frightening images of heavily armed cartel members with body armor crossing into Texas last weekend. 

"Per law enforcement source, a group of suspected cartel gunmen armed with rifles & body armor were seen on cameras crossing illegally into the Fronton, TX area in the RGV Saturday night," Melugin said on "X," formerly known as Twitter. 

Melugin said a tactical unit under Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) was immediately deployed to the area after cameras detected the armed cartel members entered the US illegally. 

"Elite Border Patrol BORTAC agents were called out & searched area, but found nobody," he said. 

Here's an example of a BORTAC agent that was dispatched. They look like Tier 1 Special Forces operators. 

The Biden administration has gone out of its way to downplay the crisis at the southern border ahead of the 2024 presidential election cycle.

On Tuesday, Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan provided The National Desk's Scott Thuman with a dose of reality about the true nature of the border crisis:

"First of all, I think what it represents in this administration is not being honest with the American people. I learned a long time ago that the intentional omission of a material fact is the same thing as a lie. They're using a sleight of hand like a good magician to get us to focus on only what's happened in our Southern border.

"Meanwhile, what they're not telling you is what's happening across the nation. This fiscal year, we're on track for over 3 million nationwide encounters. That's a 360% increase from when they took over in the past 29 months."

Morgan explained how the Biden administration is lying about the crisis:

"Second to that is what's very, very important is what they begin to do is divert those that we're previously entering in between the ports of entry.

"They're simply diverting them to the ports of entry and then they're claiming victory. In reality, it's a big shell game."

In recent Congressional testimony, Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies warned: 

"[T]his massive new population of needy foreigners will burden and transform [Americans'] communities without their say-so." 

Seeing cartel members brandishing RPGs and some crossing into the US heavily armed, one has to question if America's southern border under Biden is on the verge of falling. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/cameras-detect-heavily-armed-cartel-cross-us