A new Oklahoma State Department of Education proposal would track the number of K-12 students whose parents don’t have legal immigration status.
Under the proposed administrative rule, Oklahoma schools would have to ask students’ parents or legal guardians to provide proof of their own citizenship and a student’s upon enrollment.
If they can’t do that, the students will be counted. The state would then receive the aggregate number from each district “of students enrolled within the district for which a parent or a legal guardian of a child, or the emancipated minor could not provide proof of citizenship or legal immigration status…due to the lack of citizenship or legal immigration status of the student.”
It’s unclear exactly who would be counted in this arrangement based on the language of the rule. The immigration status of a parent does not indicate the status of their child. In other words, if a parent is in Oklahoma illegally, that does not mean their child is.
The rule provides parents nine different methods of proving they and their children have legal permission to be in the United States. But Oklahoma City immigration attorney Tara Jordan De Lara, who also leads the non-profit providing legal help to migrants called Latitude Legal Alliance, said the documents listed as viable proof of citizenship by OSDE oversimplify the complex legal realities migrant families face.
The qualification requiring an “unexpired” permanent resident or “Green card,” for example, is a redundancy, De Lara said.
“Even if your permanent resident card expires, that doesn't mean that your legal, permanent residence is taken away,” she said. “I understand why they're saying ‘unexpired.’ They want people to renew them and keep them current.”
“But, if I'm living here and my green card expires this year, I can not renew it for several years and continue working and living with full legal authority.”
It’s just like an Oklahoma-issued driver’s license. If it’s expired, you’ll still appear in the Department of Public Safety databases as a legal resident of Oklahoma, you just would be delayed in updating it.
The difference is the price. Jordan De Lara said that while it can vary greatly, attorney’s fees for a 10-year green card renewal can roughly cost between $1,500 and $4,000.
When an Oklahoman renews their driver’s license for eight years, they pay $77 plus taxes.
Driver’s licenses and state-issued ID cards are also considered good options for proving citizenship, though most public school students are not old enough to drive, and non-driver IDs for minors require parental consent.
The rule states that individual identities would not be revealed in state department data.
State Superintendent Ryan Walters had said he would take action in July to determine the “cost and burden” of students without legal immigration status attending public schools in Oklahoma.
“The federal government has failed to secure our borders, our schools are suffering over this, and where the federal government has failed to act, Oklahoma will step up,” Walters said in July. “We will make sure that we understand the cost to taxpayers so that our kids can get the best education possible.”
Walters has been a critic of federal border policy and a supporter of House Bill 4156, which was paused over the summer. That measure would have allowed local police to arrest unauthorized immigrants and jail them — a job usually reserved for federal authorities.
He sent a “bill” to the presidential candidate Kamala Harris in October for almost $500 million, claiming that’s how much it cost for Oklahoma to educate students who were in the country illegally.
Finding a way to collect data on the number of students without legal immigration status and their parents’ and using that data for “accurate cost analyses” is an agenda that lines up neatly with that of The Heritage Foundation, the conservative thinktank behind Project 2025, which outlines what the incoming Trump administration should look like.
Walters told Newsmax the night the proposed rules were released that Trump's plan to educate Americans by eliminating the federal Department of Education is the most “incredible” one in the nation’s history.
“I think President Trump has laid out the most incredible, bold, conservative education agenda the country has ever seen,” Walters said.
OSDE has not responded to requests for comment on the new rules.
The proposed rules changes are now open for public comment, and there will be a hearing in January. The State Board of Education can then approve or deny them. After that, the rules will be up for review by the legislature.
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