Afghan refugee family in America. Photo: Opening Doors
Sacramento-area school officials are trying to help students trapped in Afghanistan and their families get home, report Sawsan Morrar and Jason Pohl in the Sacramento Bee.
San Juan Unified reports 41 students stranded in their parents’ homeland after going to visit family members over the summer, write Morrar and Pohl. Sacramento City Unified officials said eight students are still in Afghanistan.
Principal Nate McGill of Ethel I. Baker Elementary school has been involved in getting the students out. He texts with family members and has been coordinating staff members who are trying to cobble together a plan.
A third-party group with connections in Afghanistan is involved with the attempted rescue of a family interviewed by the Bee.
There were two options on the table at the start of last week. The first involved paying about $2,500 to get the family a flight from Kabul to Islamabad, across the border in Pakistan. That fell through because the family didn’t qualify for visas into that country at the time, McGill said.
If they can get across the border, McGill said he and a handful of others from the Sacramento area will pay for the flight to get them back to the U.S.
California schools are preparing for an influx of Afghan refugees, reports Diana Lambert in EdSource.
Sacramento, which has a large Afghan community, is expecting about 1,200 new students from Afghanistan in the next few months, but the number could be higher, said Jessie Tientcheu, chief executive officer of Opening Doors, a refugee resettlement agency.
“Elk Grove Unified School District began offering culturally appropriate meals and setting aside rooms in many of its middle and high schools for prayer during Muslim holidays in preparation for the additional Afghan refugee students it expects in the next month,” reports Lambert. “San Juan Unified is offering Saturday school for English learners.”
In the Bay Area, “Fremont Unified is planning to hire more translators.”