California pressed to stop collecting students’ citizenship data

Civil rights groups asked California’s attorney general Monday to investigate dozens of school districts across the state that require parents to provide children’s sensitive information such as when they entered the country.

News Story (California)

Jill Tucker
San Francisco Chronicle
March 27, 2017
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Organizations mentioned/involved: Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCR), California Rural Legal Assistance Inc. (CRLA)

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DETAILS

Requiring families to provide such information not only raises legal concerns but can cause a “chilling effect,” deterring parents, especially immigrants in the country without documentation, from enrolling children in school, said the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and California Rural Legal Assistance.

While such questions have been on school enrollment forms for years, the Trump administration’s plan to aggressively enforce immigration laws has spurred opponents as well as schools and cities to reassess policies and protections in place for immigrant students and families.

Several Bay Area districts were among the 75 identified in the letter to Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Forms used by Dublin Unified and La Honda-Pescadero, for example, requested children’s Social Security numbers, while Antioch Unified asked if students were citizens at birth, and Orinda asked if students were U.S. citizens.