Testimony of Lara Lai, Senior Policy Analyst and Strategic Organizer for Education New York City Council Committee on Education Oversight Hearing: Transfer Schools and Unaccompanied Youth

On Thursday, October 30, Lara Lai, Senior Policy Analyst and Strategic Organizer for the Office of the New York City Comptroller, delivered the following testimony as prepared below to the City Council Education Committee:

Good afternoon, Chair Joseph and members of the City Council Education Committee. My name is Lara Lai and I am the Senior Policy Analyst and Strategic Organizer for Education in the Office of NYC Comptroller Brad Lander. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. 

Starting in spring of 2022, New York City began to welcome the arrival of tens of thousands of asylum seekers and other immigrants. An often-overlooked population of new arrivals are the unaccompanied young people – generally between 16 and 24 years old who arrived and are now navigating their legal, housing, health, and education needs against the backdrop of an increasingly hostile federal immigration enforcement landscape.  

Between January 2022 and January 2024, according to the Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) Youth Count survey, the number of homeless youth in New York City nearly tripled from 2,094 to 6,823 with the rise likely due to the increase in unaccompanied immigrant youth. 

Although access to public education is a right for any student until the June following their 21st birthday in NYC, some migrant youth have been denied the opportunity to go to school.  

Transfer schools, which focus on serving under-credited and overage students, are now an important educational resource for unaccompanied youth with interrupted learning.  Although transfer schools do not exclusively serve newcomer students, they offer smaller, more individualized educational settings geared towards older students who would not be able to graduate on time at a traditional school. These schools are generally also more familiar with the housing instability that migrant students face. However, there remain several barriers for students to connect with transfer schools and begin the enrollment process.  

First, there are extremely limited transfer school seats and those are reserved for students that schools deem able to graduate by 21. There are only five transfer schools created to support new arrivals and English-learners. In recent years, some transfer schools have made a deliberate effort to expand their ELL services. Brooklyn Frontiers is one such school, but it has only 175 seats in its program of personalized wrap around supports for marginalized students. 

Second, transfer schools work on a referral basis, which served its purpose in the past when students were typically referred by their high school counselor if they were in danger of not graduating. But times have changed, and immigrant youth are often in need of enrollment without previous placement in a traditional high school and without a counselor to refer them. 

Newcomer youth must enroll in school at in person Family Welcome Center (FWCs) where advocates have told us that staff are both poorly trained to assist this population of students and unable to provide the needed referrals for transfer schools. Staff do not even track the number of seats available at transfer schools, which makes it even harder for newly arrived students to find appropriate placements. Officially, FWCs accept walk-in appointments, but advocates have reported youth have still been turned away because they didn’t have a pre-scheduled appointment or because they did not have a parent with them (which is not required). The New York State Education Department issued guidance in 2016 that districts cannot force students to pursue an alternative educational pathway, such as a GED.1 Yet we have heard numerous reports that unaccompanied youth have been pushed into GED programs and discouraged from attending high school altogether. 

Based on our office’s findings from numerous interviews with advocates and school administrators we recommend: 

1. Improve access to transfer schools:  

1. Increase the number of transfer school seats: the City should create new transfer schools to both increase the number of available seats and offer more geographic access.   

1. Increase funding to transfer schools so that they can support more students and provide ELL services. 

1. Improve training at Family Welcome Centers: ensure that FWC employees have transfer school seat availability data, are familiar with transfer schools as an option, and are prepared to work with unaccompanied young people who are facing unique educational challenges. ‘ 

1. Allow transfer school enrollment on MySchools: make the enrollment process easier by allowing youth to begin the enrollment process online without having to go to an FWC.  

1. Enhance interagency coordination: shelter operators such as DYCD and the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) should work with DOE to increase youth awareness of their right to public school and make the enrollment process easier.   

Thank you for holding this important hearing and for your attention to the critical role transfer schools play in New York City. These schools provide a lifeline for at risk students, helping them get back on track toward graduation and opening doors to college, careers, and other post graduate opportunities.  

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