Mohonasen reflects on 1-year of educating asylee children

ROTTERDAM, N.Y. (NEWS10) -- It has been almost a year since the first bus carrying asylum seekers from New York City arrived in the Capital Region. Some local school districts stepped up to provide the children of asylum seekers an education.

"Reality has actually been better than expectation," Mohonasen Central School District Shannon Shine said. "I think everybody was apprehensive."

The town of Rotterdam took in a lot of those families. Superintendent Shine realized the children of those families were going to need to go to school. That's when the planning started.

"None of us have ever experienced such a heavy lift in such a short time period," he said. "But really, a lot of the things that we worried about, you know, are the students going to be assimilated well, is there going to be community kickback? A lot of those things really didn't happen, and actually in many cases, the opposite happened."

Katie Losey runs the district's English Language Learner program.

"It's just been a really all hands on deck mentality at all levels, K-12," she said. "When I've subbed in rooms before, other teachers have come in, what can I do to help, what do you need? And that's just been the mentality all year for all levels."

When NEWS10 spoke to Shine last year, he estimated the cost of accommodating the additional students would be around $300,000 per year.

"What happened was we, you know, kept expanding. We found that we had understaffed some levels," he explained. "We wanted to keep class sizes lower than we started out because it was a bigger lift than we thought. So we're slightly above that but about $400,000."

"There's a tremendous burden on local municipalities, local taxpayers, local school districts," NYS Sen. Jim Tedisco said.

Sen. Tedisco recently introduced a bill to ensure local residents aren't saddled with the extra costs of educating the asylum seekers.

"What the bill says is that they would take into consideration and the New York State budget process would evaluate and get input from every school district in the state of New York who has undertaken individuals," he said.

And as for a plan for next year?

"That is the million dollar question," Losey said. "It's a matter of enrollment because if these families are able to find permanent housing, they need to register where they are housed."

"We had a little bit of apprehension about would students be accepted by their peers, and I'm pleased to report that that has just exceeded all expectations," Shine said.