NYC students forced to go remote as city houses nearly 2K migrants at their school

Students at a Brooklyn high school were kicked out of the classroom to make room for nearly 2,000 migrants who were evacuated from a controversial tent shelter due to a monster storm closing in on the Big Apple.

The city made the move amid concerns that a massive migrant tent at Floyd Bennett Field would collapse from torrential rains and gusting winds — packing them instead into the second-floor gym at James Madison High School five miles away.

The school’s neighbors were not keen on the last-minute decision.

“This is f—ed up,” said a local resident who identified himself only as Rob. “It’s a litmus test. They are using a storm, a legitimate situation, where they are testing this out. I guarantee you they’ll be here for the entire summer.

“They’re not vetted. A lot of them have criminal records and backgrounds and we don’t even know.”

One irate mom even went off on the migrants as they pulled up inside a line of school buses in the pouring rain shortly before 6 p.m.

“How do you feel? Does it feel good?” the woman, who only identified herself as Michelle, screamed at the buses.

“How does it feel that you kicked all the kids out of school tomorrow? Does it feel good? I hope you feel good. I hope you will sleep very well tonight!”

Said a local dad, “How do you feel stealing American tax money?”

The school announced online earlier in the day that classes would be held remotely on Wednesday due to “the activation of James Madison High School as a temporary overnight respite center” for the migrants.

The decision to clear the migrants out of the field came as city officials feared for the safety of the tent city at the field with heavy rains and winds gusting up to 70 mph forecast for later on Tuesday and into Wednesday.

“To be clear, this relocation is a proactive measure being taken out of an abundance of caution to ensure the safety and wellbeing of individuals working and living at the center,” City Hall spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak said.

“The families are already in the process of being temporarily relocated and will continue to be provided with essential services and support,” Mamelak added.

“The relocation will continue until any weather conditions that may arise have stabilized and the facility is once again fit for living.”

By midday, officials were already prepping the high school for the migrants’ arrival from the airfield about five miles away, with 10 marked NYPD vehicles and a half-dozen Emergency Management trucks parked outside.

“They told us we had to get everything out by 5 [p.m.],” gym teacher Robyn Levy said outside the school.

“They sent us the email at 6 in the morning. I don’t know when we’ll be able to back.”

“What I want to know is why here?” Levy said. “Why not send them somewhere where students wouldn’t be disrupted, where students learning wouldn’t be disrupted?”

The migrant move began shortly before 5 p.m. as more than two dozen school buses lined up at the field for the short drive to the school.

It wasn’t the first time extreme weather has been an issue at the 2,000-bed tent facility, which took a pounding last month when heavy rain and gusting, 55-mph winds shook metal bolts and hinges loose from the ceiling.

The ferocious storm on Dec. 18 dropped up to 4 inches of rain in the region and had migrants inside the tents fearing for their lives, they told The Post at the time.

“The wind was so strong, it looked like the tents were going to give way and be blown apart,” Venezuelan migrant Reibi Rodrigues said.

https://nypost.com/2024/01/09/metro/migrants-evacuated-from-floyd-bennett-field-due-to-high-winds/

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Christian school in heartland to arm, train staff amid concern with 'threats' coming 'on a regular basis'

A private Christian school in Iowa announced some of its staff will be armed while on campus in a bid to better protect the school from potential attacks.

"The staff who have been selected and trained will remain anonymous, and with God’s help this layer of protection will never need to be deployed. We expect no changes to the day to day experiences of students and staff," the superintendent of Siouxland Christian School, located in Sioux City, Lindsay Laurich said in a letter to the school community last week, which was provided to Fox News Digital.

The school is not detailing how many staff members will be armed while on campus, or their identities, "in order to protect the staff who are taking this courageous responsibility," Laurich told Fox News Digital. She added that the school had been considering the policy for a year before the official announcement last week.

"I would just add that we have been working on this plan for over a year. However, we felt that this was a necessary step that was needed for our school community," Laurich said.

The announcement comes after a mass shooting at Perry High School in Iowa left a sixth grader killed, and four other students and a staffer injured.

"It is an unfortunate reality that schools have become the target of those who wish to do evil. Around our nation and sadly more close to home we see threats emerging on a regular basis. We pray for the community of Perry, Iowa, which experienced an active shooter event," Laurich’s letter to the school community last week states.

Laurich told Fox Digital that following the shooting, she read a Wall Street Journal article on the tragedy and learned of the K-12 School Shooting Database.

"As of this email there have already been 4 incidents and 7 victims. That adds up to more days than we have been back in school since the new year began," Laurich told Fox News Digital in her email on Monday.

Laurich’s letter to the school community detailed that "school safety is our highest priority," and that training and arming certain staffers to directly take on an immediate threat will better protect students in the event tragedy strikes.

"Certain members of SCS staff who have been specifically trained will be armed on campus. The School Board and Administration have developed the process for selecting and training staff with input from law enforcement, our insurance carrier, legal advisors and industry experts. This has been a serious and diligent process over the course of the past year," the letter states.

"In the event of an active shooter event these armed SCS staff are trained to go directly to the threat. Their response will allow teachers and students to get to safe positions and will provide an active response until law enforcement is able to arrive," she added.

school hallway, lockers on left, open door to class at right
Image of an empty classroom from a hallway. (iStock)

Laurich added that the local sheriff, Woodbury County Sheriff Chad Sheehan, has been a great resource amid the policy roll-out.

Schools across the nation have increasingly begun arming certain staffers in recent years to help combat potential threats. A Fox News poll from August 2022 shows that 48% of people favor arming teachers, while experts have previously told Fox News Digital that "hardening" schools with armed guards, armed teachers and additional safety measures, such as security cameras and heavy doors, help better protect students and staffers from potential tragedy.

Laurich noted in her letter to the school community that arming certain staff, though a difficult decision, was "necessary."

"On a personal note, I want you to know that this decision was a difficult one. When I entered the teaching profession it was unimaginable that someone would shoot students and teachers in a school. But the landscape has changed. If a tragic event were to occur at SCS, I need to be able to stand in front of you and say that we have done all that we can do. This is a necessary step we must take," she wrote.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/christian-school-heartland-arm-train-staff-amid-concern-threats-coming-regular-basis

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Australia: University degree dropouts reach record

The rate of students completing their degree within six years hit a record low in 2022 as cost-of-living pressures and plentiful job opportunities pushed up dropout rates.

Federal Education Department data shows 25.4 per cent of students who commenced their studies in 2017 had dropped out by the end of 2022 – the highest rate since records began in 2005 – and 1.3 percentage points higher than the previous corresponding period.

Record attrition rates are running in parallel with decreased interest in university study, with overall numbers down 13 per cent since 2016.

More than 50,000 students drop out each year. High attrition rates come with huge personal costs, including student debts, which rise in line with inflation. Such indexation pushed debts up by 7.1 per cent in June 2023.

Experts also point to opportunity cost – the career paths and full-time work that were sacrificed in favour of a study route that didn’t work out – which is almost impossible to calculate.

“On average, students pay [more than] $12,000 for their incomplete course,” said Andrew Norton, a higher education expert from Australian National University.

“They miss out on the additional lifetime earnings that university graduates typically receive. The time they spent at university could have been used working or studying at TAFE. And the online survey [by the Grattan Institute] shows that most people who drop out feel they have let themselves or others down.”

The pandemic would have kept students at university since there was little hope of getting a job, Mr Norton said. But since the economy opened up and with skill shortages rife, many students would have been attracted into full-time roles to help counter the cost-of-living bite.

Government data points to poor and disadvantaged students as being far more likely to drop out and carry the burden of student loans.

“It is possible that the strong labour market in 2022, in conjunction with increasing costs of living, had a greater influence on decision-making about higher education for [those] students,” a report from the Education Department says.

Incongruously, it is those universities that tend to have the highest student satisfaction ratings that have the highest dropout rates. This is especially the case for regional universities.

“The bottom three performing higher education institutions remained unchanged from 2020,” the report says. “Southern Cross University, the University of New England and CQUniversity have attrition rates 1.5 times more than the average.”

University of NSW, University of Melbourne and Monash remain the top three performing universities, with attrition rates of about 5 per cent or lower. It is even lower for those dropping in second or subsequent years – about 1.5 to 2 per cent.

Ian Li, director of research and policy at the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education, said four-year completion rates at some Group of Eight universities were artificially low because of large numbers undertaking double degrees and longer undergraduate programs, such as veterinary science, medicine and dentistry.

An explanation for the low student satisfaction, but low attrition at these universities is probably a combination of too-high expectations and a sense of entitlement countered by high academic ability, Professor Li said.

These universities enrol large numbers of full-time, city-based, often privately educated school leavers with high ATARs, compared to regional and outer metropolitan universities.

School results are important. Students with ATARs below 60 are twice as likely to drop out of university as students with ATARs above 90.

Just over two thirds of students – 69.8 per cent – complete within nine years of starting. Three universities – Charles Darwin, Swinburne and University of Tasmania – have just one in every two students graduate within nine years.

https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/education/university-degree-dropouts-reach-record-20240104-p5ev3u

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