NYC schools’ ‘Dream Squads’ program gives immigrant students resources, hope

During the height of the migrant influx, a Brooklyn middle school took in new students, many from South America, who arrived without the necessary warm clothing for their first winter in New York City.

New York City’s broader public school system was still finding its footing to support the newcomers. But a team of staff members at Evergreen Middle School for Urban Exploration, home to a Spanish dual-language program, saw an easy way to assist and started collecting $20 from families to give the children jackets.

“We had this big influx of new immigrants, and we didn’t know how to help them,” said Lucila Macias, a counselor at the Bushwick school. “But one of the things for sure was that there was this one day where it got really, really cold and the majority of our students were from Ecuador, so they did not have any coats.”

Macias, a parent coordinator and other staffers raised $2,000, emptied a school junk closet and transformed it into the first iteration of the school’s “dignity boutique” — where immigrant families could pick out items for themselves.

“I’m an immigrant myself,” the counselor said. “I was born in Ecuador so I know what it’s like to come to this country not have the resources, and have to ask people and be made to feel like you’re less than. Our store looks like it belongs in Williamsburg.”

Macias and the other staff members got involved with “Dream Squads,” a citywide initiative that has taken on new significance in the Trump era’s second term. Dream Squads are groups of three to six teachers and other adults in the building who receive funding for school-specific plans to support immigrant and multilingual families.

The initiative has never been the focus of a press conference or major media profile during the Adams administration. But behind the scenes, the program has been quietly growing. When city education officials issued a news release this week about their progress under Mayor Adams, Dream Squads was featured as a key accomplishment.

In the fall, members — which may include administrators, parent coordinators and social workers — attend six trainings on immigration policies and best practices. As the year continues, the team implements one or two strategies, while receiving coaching from central administrators. At some schools, teachers have taken it upon themselves to train their colleagues, further expanding the pool of staffers ready to lend a hand to the new arrivals.

The initiative gets at a profound irony in Adams’ legacy. While the mayor himself has faced harsh criticism over his handling of the migrant crisis — and, in particular, the language he used to describe their arrival and its impact on New York City — his administration officials often worked wonders to expand support for the newcomer population.

“We do hope that every school can put together and have a Dream Squad of dedicated educators who serve as these advocates, who point families and students to relevant resources, [and] who are thinking about pedagogical approaches,” said Charlene Clarke, executive director of multilingual and immigrant student support at the Education Department.

Evergreen Middle School is one of 136 schools and a handful of local school districts that have assembled a Dream Squad since the program’s launch in 2020. Sixty-seven of those are currently receiving a total of $750,000 in additional funding to build out their programs.

On top of the clothing boutique, Evergreen offered English classes for parents on Saturdays and partnered with a local nonprofit, the Puerto Rican Coalition, on know-your-rights trainings. The school also connected families with a lawyer to provide general advice. By their second year with Dream Squads, the school started running teacher workshops on the immigrant experience.

Last year, Evergreen launched one of its most ambitious efforts yet: a student-led podcast on immigration. The school had just gotten a new podcast studio, and students were asking Macias and the school social worker about the two adults’ experiences with immigration and learning English. From there, the students decided to turn the interview into a 10-minute podcast with six people, including teachers and classmates.

Students in the podcast club took on different responsibilities — interviewing, recording and editing — and earned social studies credit.

“We had a couple [interviewees] tell them, ‘Yeah, I came in here, I was undocumented,’” Macias said. “It was important to see that just because you were not documented, it didn’t mean that you could not pursue a higher education, you could not do something else with your life.”

Across the five boroughs, Clarke, the education official, said Dream Squads have set up “buddy systems” to pair newly arrived students with their more experienced classmates, organized coffee talks with immigrant families, and created navigation guides to their buildings and the broader city — translated into multiple languages.

Those efforts have taken on newfound importance as the school system reckons with enrollment declines during the Trump administration, with some of the steepest drops at schools that had registered the most migrant students over the last few years.

In a recent interview, Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos blamed the declines, at least in part, to swaths of immigrant families moving out of the city or leaving the United States. Enrollment plunged by 11% this year at dozens of schools that were more likely to receive migrant students, compared to 2% citywide, according to a recent Chalkbeat analysis.

Evergreen’s principal said the school has worked hard not only to maintain its enrollment, but even increase it by fostering a welcoming culture, no matter if you are an immigrant student or not.

There’s reason for optimism: The school registered some 350 students this fall, similar to last school year, according to preliminary data. Importantly, more sixth graders enrolled this year, which Acting Principal Megan Kennelly hopes is a sign of things to come. Early projections suggest the school could add 30 students to its roster by next school year.

“The work that we’re doing across the board is making sure that students feel safe and welcome,” Kennelly said. “Students want to be here — and they want to be here day after day, year after year.”