The enrollment staff in Room 100 generally helps parents find a spot in public school for their children. But nowadays, says Danielle Uttley, standing in the windowless waiting room at the San Francisco Unified School District’s headquarters, they are scrambling to find students a place to sleep.
“How can you not do what you can to help?” said Eric Cuentos, who works at the center along with Uttley.
The crisis at the border has increasingly come to San Francisco, and the city has been inundated with new immigrants.
Since January alone, at least 447 new immigrants have come to Room 100, the Enrollment Center at 555 Franklin St. The vast majority — 316 — hail from countries in Latin America, particularly Guatemala, Honduras and Peru.
Because City Hall has yet to put in place any formal processing center, the enrollment center, already adorned with posters in different languages, has become a one-stop shop to help newcomers connect to shelter, legal support, health care and transportation.
“We know that most of the newcomers walk through our office,” said Lauren Koehler, the center’s executive director. “There isn’t really a great system outside of our office.”
Each student who comes to Room 100 leaves with a backpack full of school supplies and vouchers for the bus. But it feels “short-sighted,” said Uttley, to send them away with a backpack when they can’t guarantee they will have a place to sleep.
At least 37 of the newcomers who came to the center this year were homeless — and, as some families choose not to disclose their housing status, this is likely an undercount, said Angelina Romano, the social worker who has been keeping a tally of newcomers.
Romano, who coordinates the school district’s immigrant and refugee program, has been working with the enrollment center for around five years. At first, she was hot-desking in the conference room, but when another social worker joined in August last year, they established the “Newcomer Welcome Station.”
There, they work in tandem with the school district’s staff.
“I try to get them an appointment before they leave,” said Cuentos, who finds himself booking immunization appointments (students need the required vaccines to enroll) or “calling in a favor” to try and secure a spot in a shelter for a family.
Already, he’s gotten a different view of the city. “You could have triple the resources and it still wouldn’t be enough,” he said.
The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing currently funds 316 units of shelter and transitional housing for families with minor children. Earlier in March, Mayor London Breed and Supervisors Myrna Melgar and Hillary Ronen proposed to increase that capacity.
The department anticipates adding some 35 additional slots in hotels in the next six weeks. In the meantime, the enrollment staff in Room 100 scramble to try to find slots for students at a shelter, which these days are usually full up.
MORE ON NEWCOMERS AT SFUSD
At the Enrollment Center
Alvaro Castillo, his wife, and six-year-old daughter came to the United States from Peru in October and to San Francisco in February. “We came to San Francisco because it was a sanctuary city,” he said in Spanish. Earlier, Castillo was in San Pablo, but found few resources. He’s hoping that is different in San Francisco. “I say it was [a sanctuary city], because I don’t know if it still is.”
Castillo and his family have been hopping from shelter to shelter. Earlier this year, when trying to secure a spot at the shelter at Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 Community School, he was informed that the spot was dependent on his daughter being enrolled in one of the district’s schools.
So he ran to the district headquarters to register his daughter, and arrived 30 minutes before it closed on a recent Friday.
The social workers, who speak Spanish, help immigrants like Castillo. If newcomers speak a different language, they dial in an interpreter over the phone.
This year, Romano and her colleague have helped students from all over the globe: Yemen, Russia, Ukraine and China, to name a few.
To enroll in school, each student and their guardian must have identification, which can be difficult for some newcomers whose documents were held at the border. They also need immunizations and an address. “That’s the biggest barrier,” said Uttley of the enrollment team.
For Castillo, the staff jotted down 555 Franklin St. — the school district’s headquarters — as his residence, something they often have to do to expedite the enrollment process.
“Our number one goal is to make sure the families have what they need,” said Uttley.
And that’s an impossible one for the school district staff. Room 100 has a single official task: Registering students in the district’s schools. Beyond that, they must rely on other organizations and city agencies, connecting families to the Human Services Agency or the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, for example, and hoping they can help.
Asked if what they are able to do is enough, Cuentos, who works at the center, said no. “Definitely not,” he said. “Better than nothing, I suppose.”
