About 1,000 children — or nearly 15% of the 7,600 kids living in migrant shelters whose families got notices to leave city shelters since the end of June — have left the public school system, representatives of the city’s Office of Asylum Seekers disclosed at a City Council hearing Tuesday.
Molly Schaeffer, the head of the city’s Office of Asylum Seeker Operations, shared that and other statistics in her testimony regarding families that had received notices to vacate shelter within 60 days — suggesting widespread disruption to children.
“It’s devastating the schools,” responded City Councilmember Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan). “We’re one administration. Are we thinking about what we can do to keep those kids…so they will stay in those schools.”
According to Schaeffer, another 830 transferred schools while another 2,300 switched shelters but remained in their original school and 3,100 remained in the same shelter and school
The figures came out in a Council hearing scrutinizing the shelter stay time limits , which the administration of Mayor Eric Adams began phasing in just over a year ago.