In Delaware, where the maximum age is 20, it was the district homeless and foster care liaison serving Milford High School who said Hector’s enrollment was “not plausible.” The principal then waved him in.
The 74’s responses came from a wide range of personnel. Though the news outlet was unable to determine the positions held by all respondents, they included 160 registrars, 47 counselors, 45 principals, assistant principals, vice principals or associate principals; 61 secretaries and 33 people who worked in “registration.” Twenty were typists or clerks and 24 worked in “enrollment.” Some staffers held multiple titles. For example, a secretary might also be a registrar.
Strom said it is incumbent on schools to clearly state students’ enrollment rights.
While it’s helpful to note alternatives, such as adult education, he said, older newcomers must be told they are legally entitled to a public school education in the states where those rights exist.
“They are morally, ethically and legally bound,” he said of school staffers.
Graduation a fear factor
When Monica Venegas arrived in South Carolina alone at age 20, she was able to enroll at R.B. Stall High School in Charleston. She started in 12th grade, completing all four English classes in a single year to meet graduation requirements.
Venegas, now 21, had already earned a high school diploma in Chile and had studied some English there. But she wanted to better speak and understand the language — Justin Bieber song lyrics could get her only so far — and take steps toward college.
Maxwell Vittorio/For The 74
Monica Venegas in front of R.B. Stall High School in North Charleston, South Carolina.
Monica Venegas in front of R.B. Stall High School in North Charleston, South Carolina. (Maxwell Vittorio)
After graduating in May 2023, the aspiring ESL teacher took five courses at Charleston Southern University in the fall on a partial scholarship. She recently halted her studies so she could work at McDonald’s to pay for more schooling.
The soft-spoken young woman said high school was critical to her success in America.
“If I didn’t go to high school, I don’t think I could go to college,” she said on a sunny April afternoon.
Venegas’s trajectory is not the path envisioned by the hundreds of school staffers who turned Hector away, or tried to. Alanys Zacarias, 22 and from Venezuela, said she was met with the far more common response — rejection — when she attempted to enroll in Goose Creek High School, also in South Carolina, when she was 18.
“The person told me no, that I was, I don’t know, I was too old, but he just broke my heart when he said no,” said Zacarias, who now works at a Walmart and in a factory that manufactures high-end pans.
Goose Creek is less than eight miles away from the school that accepted Venegas. A school spokeswoman said Goose Creek complies with state admissions requirements and had no comment on Zacarias’s statement. Goose Creek “is home to one of our more diverse student bodies,” she added, and that staff there were experienced “in working with international and multilingual students and families on enrollment and completion of high school.”
Jo Napolitano/The 74
Alanys Zacarias outside the South Carolina Walmart where she works.
Our test student was admitted at five high schools and turned down at four others in that state, where students can legally remain in school until 21. Two other high schools there indicated they would probably refuse him.
South Carolina schools are obligated to enroll newcomers even if they graduated from high school in another country, something that other states, including Colorado, do not allow. In New Jersey, such students can enroll if their diploma does not meet state standards.
For our test student, a 19-year-old whose high school education was cut short after ninth grade, the reasons most often — and most emphatically stated — for turning him away were his age and inability to graduate “on time.”
“When they come here only for a year or two and then they leave, they are considered a dropout for us, and that goes against us on our state report, which is a big thing,” explained Tina Martinez, the registrar at Guymon High School in Oklahoma who refused to enroll Hector even though students in her state can stay on until 21.
Martinez was not alone in citing her high school’s graduation rate as a concern. Several other school representatives said the same in part because federal K-12 education law mandates that states identify all high schools where the graduation rate dips below 67% for comprehensive support and improvement. Individual states have their own, additional remediation measures.
Screenshot/Final 2020-2021 GHS Tiger Times video
Guymon High School’s Tiger Times Broadcast Production class.
Guymon High School, where 79% of students are Hispanic and 76% are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, had an overall 73% four-year graduation rate in 2022. The number dropped to 58% for English learners. Nationally, English learners had a 71% high school graduation rate vs. 86% for all students in 2019-20, according to the most recent federal data.
“There is no legal basis that the expected graduation date would affect the requirement to provide education up to age 21 … It’s a recognition that education has inherent value, not just the value that having the diploma offers.” Wyoming Department of Education
Boals, who founded a multilingual learners consortium called WIDA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said graduation should not be a mandate placed on any student’s enrollment. In fact, he said, many who go through the system don’t obtain diplomas.
“But we don’t look at them in ninth grade and say, ‘I don’t think you’re going to make it all the way in four years and get a diploma, so let’s just kick you out right now because this is a waste of your time,’” he said. “You want kids to learn whatever they can learn when they’re within the age of being able to learn.”
The Wyoming Department of Education agreed, as did officials in Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts and New Mexico.
“There is no legal basis that the expected graduation date would affect the requirement to provide education up to age 21,” the Wyoming department said in a statement. “The legal requirement is to provide education, not to provide education only if we expect that the student will complete certain milestones. It’s a recognition that education has inherent value, not just the value that having the diploma offers.”
Newcomer students motivated to attend understand that value — and the lifelong consequences of failing to graduate. Several other immigrant students who enrolled in high school in their late teens or early 20s told The 74 the experience was vital to building their future in the U.S.
One, Diego Vila Peña, said he was the only 18-year-old in his ninth-grade class in suburban Houston in 2017.
It was a tough transition: He had nearly completed 12th grade in Cuba but didn’t speak a word of English and knew nothing about life in America. He struggled, at first, to fit in. But he persevered — and excelled.
Courtesy Diego Vila Peña
Diego Vila Peña and his mother, Nedelsis Peña Canales, at his Texas State University college graduation.
He was soon moved to Advanced Placement classes and eventually graduated magna cum laude from Texas State University in San Marcos last year. With a bachelor’s in psychology, he’s contemplating pursuing a graduate degree in cognitive neuroscience therapy or linguistics.
“High school changed everything for me,” Vila Peña said. “I don’t know what I would be, the person I would be, if I had not gone to high school or stayed on top of my education.”
Strom, of Re-imagining Migration, said not only does high school allow for a focus on English language development, it’s where students acquire the soft skills they need in every area in life, including the workforce.
“The social interactions matter so, so much,” he said. “Schools are places where belonging begins. We want to make sure that young people are able to acculturate and integrate into society because our future depends on it.”
But many schools did not share that perspective. A staffer at Centennial High School in Pueblo, Colorado, for example, agreed to enroll our test student, but added, “I don’t see how it would benefit him.”
Likewise, Frontier High School in Red Rock, Oklahoma, admitted Hector, but principal Lori Cooksey warned it “might not do a bit of good.”
Courtesy Omaha Central High
Central High School in Omaha, Nebraska.
A counselor at Central High School in Omaha, Nebraska, questioned Hector’s motives for wanting an education at all before accepting him.
“So, essentially, you are just using us to learn English,” Julie Politi said.
Tough hurdles and unusual restrictions
Schools across the country, in considering Hector’s enrollment, erected barriers that seemed to restrict access.
Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, accepted our student but noted it could not proceed with registration without a letter from the minister of education in Venezuela. Similarly, John Handley High School in Winchester, Virginia, said Hector’s enrollment depended in part on that country’s compulsory education laws.
Darren Heslep, principal at Green River High School in Green River, Wyoming, accepted Hector but said that “he wouldn’t get to participate in extracurriculars.”
Many school staffers, including the principal at Colorado High School Charter, Osage Campus, warned her school might not be a solid choice for a student just learning the language.
“He’s going to walk into fully English-speaking classes,” Elizabeth Feldhusen said.
