Whether a prospective student speaks Spanish, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Arabic or Mam — a Mayan language used in parts of Guatemala and Mexico — Oakland Unified School District’s enrollment office has a staffer who can help. 

If a newcomer communicates using a less common tongue like Dari and Pashto — spoken in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran — they’ll call in favors from local community groups to translate. 

What staffers won’t do, unlike in many other districts across the country, is allow a language divide to become a barrier to an immigrant student’s enrollment. 

“We take seriously our call to be a sanctuary district and a community school, not just in name, not just as a tagline or the sexy new initiative, but as an authentic calling,” said Kilian Betlach, the district’s executive director for enrollment.

The approach stands out compared to schools throughout the U.S.: A recent 74 investigation found older newcomers were rampantly denied admission, including hundreds of times in states where they have a legal right to attend based on their age. 

Our reporting showed schools allow a wide variety of staff to answer critical enrollment questions — often incorrectly — and are prone to steer these students to adult education, night school and GED programs. Many deny admission based on a lack of transcripts or other paperwork, obstacles Oakland tries hard to overcome. 

When enrollment requests to the 34,000-student Bay Area district are simple, involving students 17 or under who have at least some of the necessary paperwork, registration at the district begins and ends with enrollment office staff. 

But when a newcomer has no proof of address or birth certificate and is over age 18 — they’re sent down the hall to the Refugee and Asylee office, which handles the most challenging cases.

“We hope to be the front door to services in Oakland,” said Nate Dunstan, program manager for refugees and newcomers at the district. 

For many families, he said, his office is their first point of contact with any local governmental entity. 

“We want to help make it a smooth entry to our schools, make sure kids are placed in the right program … that is easy to get to and has supportive services,” he said. 

Marvin Rivas Zavala, who came to Oakland’s enrollment office on a recent sunny morning alongside his mother and cousin, was in the equivalent of 11th grade in El Salvador when he left for America. 

He arrived in the United States in late October speaking little English. The district would have placed the 17-year-old in a higher grade if he was proficient in the language, but Dunstan instead enrolled him in 10th to give the teen more time in high school.

While some new students are upset to see graduation pushed back, Rivas Zavala is focused on long-term goals: He wants to be fully prepared for college, he said, like the other young people in his family — including his brother and cousin — who have already enrolled in higher education in the U.S. and abroad.

“I want to do software engineering after high school,” he said with certainty. 

It took his family less than 30 minutes to register him. Staffers say they’re determined to make the process quick and easy. 

In their initial intake but after a child is enrolled, they ask about immigration status in the event that they can help — by providing, for example, the name of a legitimate immigration attorney — and make sense of foreign transcripts. 

If they have a relative in a particular high school, staffers might first send a new arrival there hoping it will encourage their attendance before they switch to a more appropriate setting. Oakland Unified might also place them on a campus where they can find peers from their homeland to ease their transition. 

Esmeralda Flores Paredes, 17 and from El Salvador, came to the United States on Sept. 8 and was in government detention in Texas for nearly a month before she was released to her sister in California on Oct. 4. 

She finished high school in El Salvador — even completing a few months of college there — and hopes to graduate high school here in a year.  

After that: “I want to keep studying,” said the young woman, who plans on working in the tourism industry. 

After a quick chat with enrollment staff, Flores Paredes was assigned to Castlemont High School and then transferred to another campus, Rudsdale Continuation High School, which has a program designed to make attendance and graduation attainable for older newcomers. 

Enrollment staff use students’ first visit to help them — and their families — apply for public health insurance and ask if they are facing a housing crisis or any other issue that could keep them from attending. 

“That’s our ultimate goal, that the student is in school,” Dunstan said. “But there are, of course, a million reasons why it would be hard for that to happen.”

Dunstan and his colleagues gave their cell phone numbers to several newcomers who came through the enrollment office earlier this year, telling them they were not only concerned about their registration, but their well-being. 

Seeking school admission can be anxiety provoking for non English-speaking families, who have no idea whether staff will accommodate them. Their enrollment requests come at a particularly perilous time: On the eve of President-elect Donald Trump’s second term of office, a fight he won after vilifying immigrants.

These students and families don’t know whether he will follow through on his pledge to rid the country of its roughly : While the promise seemed critical to his victory, it’s been criticized for its .  

“I mean, it’s difficult to see families overwhelmed about the election outcomes,” said Cristhian Pineda Diaz, an unaccompanied immigrant youth specialist. “It’s also difficult to hear students being afraid to be separated from their parents. But I’m hopeful because we will do our best job to help families in every way possible.”

New students leave with basic supplies, including backpacks, pens, pencils, binders, folders and notebooks — whatever local charities and other organizations provide — and when they come with younger siblings, they might also leave with diapers or new shoes. 

If they need immunizations and find the most popular clinic is backed up for months, enrollment staff will find other sites that can help. And if a family is overburdened by bills, the district can connect them with community-based organizations that can offer financial assistance.

In an effort to further ease the registration process, newcomers’ receiving schools are quickly notified about their enrollment, with students’ academic and immunization status almost immediately available through a shared database. 

Staff will also travel from the main enrollment office to another location in this 78-square-mile city that might be easier for newcomer families to reach.

That’s just the effort Oakland Unified makes for those students who actively pursue registration: It has an entirely different plan for those who don’t. 

Staffers also look for would-be students in the community. Qoc’avib Revolorio, another unaccompanied immigrant youth specialist, has, in the past, teamed up with Street Level Health Project, a local nonprofit that delivers food to day laborers at area pickup spots.

“Since that organization has a bit of street cred, I would join them on their rounds from 7:30 to 10 a.m.,” said Revolorio, who would make these trips prior to the start of each semester or just before the school marking periods would begin. “We would hand out flyers, shake hands, ask any of the laborers if they had children or nieces or nephews that just arrived … that we could help personally enroll in school.”

He’d use the opportunity, he said, to scope the crowd for younger faces, approach potential students with a smile, talk to them about learning English and about the district’s soccer program before he’d ask if they needed any help with immigration issues.  

Staff also regularly call former dropouts and ask why they are no longer attending and conduct home visits when necessary. Much of Dunstan’s work is funded by the California Department of Social Services. A host of other organizations offer further assistance to newcomers and their families: , for example, provides families with money after they attend a financial literacy class while contributes up to $2,000 toward rent.  

The district erects billboards to encourage families to enroll by visiting ChooseOUSD.org, runs targeted digital and Spanish radio ads that promote pre-K and transitional kindergarten, a bridge to elementary education that has been particularly beneficial for English learners. They even operate a booth at the local Día de los Muertos celebration, sharing similar information.

Oakland aims to reach families wherever they are and, to that end, technology is key, Betlach said. Its previous enrollment system wasn’t optimized for mobile, making it difficult for many newcomer families to register. 

“It looked like Netscape navigator,” he said, referring to the long-defunct web browser. “Low-income communities use all of their internet through the phone, so if your tools are not mobile enhanced, you are pushing out low-income users.”

Sometimes, enrollment staff said, it can take months, or even a year to convince students to pursue their education. In such cases, staffers might help them obtain work permits, find jobs, locate safer housing or child care so a teen is freed up to learn.

They try hard to make as few refusals as possible, recently admitting, for example, a 20-year-old from Guatemala with no high school credits. They fought for nine months to help her find a path to attendance.

The district welcomes her — and scores of others just like her — during a particularly difficult time, as it faces a projected next year and is wrestling with closing and consolidating schools. 

“There is a moral force to recognize and welcome all members of your community, not just those that fit into neat boxes or will help drive data-driven achievement narratives,” Betlach said. “We believe this, truly, even when no one is looking.”

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

They come to the enrollment office at 18, 19, or 20, often without transcripts, identification or immunizations. Some have massive gaps in their education and many speak little English. 

Any one of these would be reason enough for districts across the country to deny admission, but not here. 

With ample enrollment staff speaking a variety of languages, Oakland Unified School District offers newcomers a chance to register at one of six schools based upon their needs. And the 34,000-student district works hard to address other issues, too. 

No money for transportation? Here’s a bus pass. Worried about school supplies? Take this new backpack. Anxious about an upcoming court case? Here’s the name of a trustworthy immigration attorney. 

It was just what Jose Rafael Villegas Pena was hoping for, sitting inside the enrollment office on a recent afternoon. His 18-year-old twin brother was already studying in the district and told him about its supportive staff. 

Villegas Pena, who had been living with relatives in Texas, was both nervous and excited about this next chapter of his life. College is a must, he said, tapping his black high-top Converse All Stars on the floor. And Oakland Unified, his brother told him, would help him get there. 

“I need college,” said Villegas Pena, who came to the U.S. from El Salvador in January 2022. “I want to be a pilot.”

Oakland doesn’t have to do any of this. While California had in 2022 — and some of the most far-reaching laws to protect them — it provides no stipulation for general education students who wish to enroll in high school past the state’s compulsory attendance age of 18.

That additional time is critical to the older immigrant students Oakland administrators say they’re compelled to help.

“It is a moral mandate,” said Carmelita Reyes, a principal who has worked with such students for years. “It is not a state mandate that we serve these kids.”

But even in the 35 states where students have a legal right to attend high school at least until age 20, they are frequently turned away, ����Ӱ�� found in a recent investigation. 

The news outlet called hundreds of schools across the country asking if they would accept an older newcomer with limited English and significant interruptions in their schooling — exactly the type of student Oakland welcomes.

In an already xenophobic era, our story revealed pervasive hostility and suspicion toward these new arrivals. Donald Trump’s re-election might leave them further imperiled. The Oakland school community is on edge about his , which could send these students and their families directly into the path of chaos in their homeland. 

“Unsurprisingly, we’re seeing a lot of concern about their immigration case precarity, and anxiety about the future,” said Lauren Markham, director of the Oakland International High School Learning Lab. “We’ll need more legal services, more mental health services — all of this when the school district is ”&�Բ�����;

A drop in enrollment, meanwhile, could trigger further funding decreases, Markham said. But no one knows what to expect of a leader who used race-baiting and fear to help re-win his post but whose most ambitious deportation plans might be thwarted by their and .

Markham worked in Oakland schools when the first Trump administration imposed as part of its “zero tolerance” policy on illegal immigration. Thousands of children were taken from their parents in a calamitous and unpopular program that

“It’s so hard to read the tea leaves,” Markham said. “In the months after family separation began, our arrivals continued to be high. So, it’s really hard to say what the future holds.”

Staff and students aren’t in shock as they were when Trump was first elected in 2016: They know what it’s like to survive his administration, “to fight for human rights and basic protections,” she said, and they’ve weathered strongmen before — here and back home.

“I think we’re all just anticipatorily exhausted,” she said. 

In the meantime, Oakland, just 12 miles east of San Francisco, will continue making high school enrollment and graduation possible for this group of students in ways that are unlike much of the rest of the country — and the state of California itself.

‘We had to rethink high school’ 

Young immigrants were leaving Oakland’s comprehensive high schools at an alarming rate in the early 2000s. 

“Newcomers at the traditional large schools were dropping out massively,” said Reyes. “The schools were not designed to support them. The district was looking for something innovative that would better serve students.”

So, in 2007, it partnered with , which designs, develops and supports schools and programs for recent immigrants and refugees, to open a new site, Oakland International, to address their needs. 

And it worked for years until a massive uptick in far exceeded the school’s capacity. Oakland International, when full, enrolls approximately 400 students. 

“The district had to adapt,” Reyes said. “We had to rethink high school.”

Oakland expanded its newcomer programs at several sites but a certain subset of students — often Central American boys who immigrated when they were 16 or older and had missed some school back home — still weren’t making it to graduation, no matter which school they attended. 

In an effort to learn why, the district commissioned a study in 2017 asking roughly 50 dropouts what caused them to leave: They needed a far more flexible schedule, possibly with shorter hours, they said. 

So, the district opened another program, this one located at Rudsdale Continuation High School, specifically for newcomers. It’s since switched locations, but its mission has stayed the same. 

Reyes, who spent part of her honeymoon in Burma visiting nearby refugee camps and hospitals to better understand a subset of immigrant students arriving in her district, is its principal. 

“There is nothing pretty about educating newcomers,” said the Princeton and Columbia University graduate. “It’s not elegant and it’s not linear.”&�Բ�����;

The newcomer program at Rudsdale, which opened with 25 students but grew to 100 in just a few months, was built for those determined to learn English and earn a high school diploma. 

The staff offers wraparound services, taking students to the Social Security office, the courthouse, the eye doctor and local shelters when needed. Anything to keep them in school. 

“The social service element makes the rest of it work,” said Sara Green, a social worker at Rudsdale for nearly four years until July 2021. “You can’t expect these kids to come to school if their other needs are not met.”&�Բ�����;

Despite enormous obstacles, many persevere, Green said.

“I have never met a group of kids who were more incredibly focused on figuring it out and making it work,” she said. “They were the most enthusiastic group of young people. They just felt so grateful for getting to be in school.”

Emma Batten-Bowman, a former assistant principal at Rudsdale, was at the school when it opened.

“I had visitors from San Francisco, North Carolina and New York,” she said. “People were coming in constantly saying, ‘I can’t believe this exists. This is amazing. How did you get your district to do this?’ It actually doesn’t take that much: Every district has a continuation program. All we did was create this little wing.”

But the notion of designing schools and programs solely to deliver education more effectively to older immigrant students — and Green’s observation of how fiercely they grabbed hold of that chance — is in stark contrast to what ����Ӱ�� discovered in its undercover enrollment investigation. 

Senior reporter Jo Napolitano spent 16 months calling 630 high schools in every state and Washington, D.C., trying to enroll a fictitious 19-year-old named Hector Guerrero. Napolitano told school officials he was her nephew, newly arrived from Venezuela. 

Hector was rejected 330 times — including more than 200 instances in which he had a right to attend based upon his age. 

Of the 35 schools that Napolitano contacted in California, not a single one accepted him: 33 denied Hector and two others said they were likely to.

Dozens of school staffers from across the country — including those who ultimately enrolled our test student — told Napolitano Hector would never make it to graduation day.

“To be explicit, it’s going to be a waste of time,” said Jim Karedes, principal of Wisconsin’s Delavan-Darien High School. “We could babysit him and that’s about what it would be. It would not behoove him to go down this pathway. He is 100% going to be a dropout.”&�Բ�����;

Work, pay rent, go to school

Roughly 1.1 million people ages 18 to 20 entered the United States between 2012 and 2021, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Obtaining a high school diploma could help many prepare for college or the workforce, advocates say. But with so many demands on their time — including jobs and caring for younger siblings — the path to graduation is rarely easy. 

Rudsdale found a way to address students’ pain points with shorter school days and fewer required credits — 190 as opposed to the typical 230 — plus the added support from staff. It currently serves between 150 to 200 newcomers: It graduates students every 12 weeks and takes on new ones for the first nine weeks of each trimester. 

New arrivals to Oakland Unified, who have graduated and gone onto college, sometimes find themselves back there. Rafael Barrios, 25, who hails from El Salvador and graduated from Oakland International in 2017, earned his bachelor’s degree in linguistics and Spanish studies at UC Santa Cruz. He now works as program coordinator for Soccer Without Borders, a club credited for keeping many of Oakland Unified’s immigrant kids in school.  

Rudsdale has helped more than 250 people earn their diploma so far, including those who would never have that opportunity in a traditional high school setting, administrators said. 

In 2023-24, newcomers at Rudsdale had a 58.3% cohort graduation rate with 30.6% of those students still enrolled but not yet graduated and a dropout rate of 11.1%, Reyes said. Oakland Unified had a 79.5% cohort graduation rate in 2023-24 and a .

Belinda Perez Gomez, 20, of Guatemala, is determined to be among the graduates.

“School is helping me a lot in English,” said the aspiring nurse. “I like the teachers. They have patience, and when you can’t do something, they are there to help you.”&�Բ�����;

Perez Gomez, who lives with her sister, acknowledged it can take students like her more time to graduate because they have responsibilities typical high schoolers don’t: She pays $750 a month toward her rent and while her family is supportive, everyone is shouldering bills. 

Paula Rodriguez Tinjacá, 20, came to the United States eight months ago from Colombia and hopes to work for an airline. She had almost finished high school in her home country and enrolled at Rudsdale to learn English, earn her diploma and apply to college. 

“There is more opportunity here than in Colombia,” she said.

Upon its opening, a majority of students enrolled in Rudsdale’s newcomer program were between 18 and 21 and most came from Guatemala, followed by Honduras and El Salvador. 

According to a recent in-house survey conducted by the school, only 40% of Rudsdale students live with a parent — many stay with distant relatives or friends, some of whom they had never met before coming to America — and a majority pay rent in whole or in part. 

More than 60% miss school because of it. 

But none of the staffers at Rudsdale berate or count out those who skip class, arrive late or leave early. Teachers are grateful they can participate at all.

When a student fails to show up, staffers ask why and see if there is an obstacle they can remove. Some have tenuous living situations and move out of abusive homes with the school’s help. 

Nearly a third of Oakland Unified’s students are . Half speak another language at home and nearly 81% of all students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a key indicator of poverty. 

The district currently serves 3,100 newcomers — including 206 refugees, 254 asylum seekers and 775 unaccompanied children. 

Batten-Bowman, the former assistant principal at Rudsdale, acknowledged that some of its older immigrant students could have attended adult education instead. 

“But adult education doesn’t offer a diploma,” she said. “It’s more just like classes. They have some great stuff, but it’s not high school. If they want to be in high school and have a high school experience, why wouldn’t I give it to them? This is something Oakland got right. We should be getting so much credit for identifying the need and creating an option that works for this group.”

A different approach to learning 

Eleven students sit down for an algebra class on a recent sun-drenched afternoon. On the board is a simple, affirmative statement: “I can solve any kind of multi-step equation.”

The room is crowded with several wide, white desks — all arranged in a crude U shape — that seat two students each. And the walls are nearly covered with posters relating basic mathematical concepts, including multiplication tables. 

A dozen small apples rest atop a microwave near the door alongside cartons of cereal for those who might have missed a meal: Rudsale, which opens a food pantry inside its cafeteria every week, won’t allow an empty stomach to interfere with a linear equation. 

Teacher Nicholas Nguyen speaks some Spanish but relies on Google translate to communicate with his students, often leaving them encouraging notes on his whiteboard. 

“You’ve been showing up at least 4 times a week which is really good considering you have to work,” he wrote to one learner. 

While he sometimes spoke to the class as a whole, Nguyen spent much of his time providing individual attention to those like Dilan Pinzon, 19 and from Colombia. Not the most engaged student at first, Pinzon blossomed into a diligent one who is now fully focused on college after learning he could play soccer there.

“I decided to come to high school because here there are new opportunities to graduate and learn more English and meet more people,” Pinzon said when math class ended. “What I want to do after graduating is study at college … and be able to play soccer, since I love it.”

When Reyes proposed, years ago, opening schools and programs to educate and graduate older students like Pinzon, her colleagues were flabbergasted. They asked if she thought it was appropriate or if she was somehow putting younger kids in harm’s way. 

“There were a lot of, ‘I would never do that,’ statements from other principals,” she recalled. “But we did it. And then when people came out to our school and saw our average graduate was close to 20 — a fleet of 19- and 20- and 21-year- olds — they asked, ‘What has that experience been like?’ ”

Reyes’s response surprised them. 

“I said, ‘It’s not the older kids who cause problems,’” she said. “If you are 19 and 20 years old, you can make a choice with your life. Am I going to go to work, sit on the couch or go to school? If you are going to come to school, humble yourself and forgo income to be with younger kids … you have made a commitment to yourself and you are pretty focused, by and large.” 

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

MathBOOST began last fall with six trained tutors — all of them parents or caregivers — working across four of the district’s 50 elementary campuses. It will expand to more than 20 tutors assisting children in 11 schools next year, said Oakland REACH’s CEO, Lakisha Young.

The tutors, or as Oakland REACH calls them, work inside the classroom alongside teachers and also pull children out for small group instruction, said Alicia Arenas, the district’s director of elementary instruction. 

“We really want our kids to be algebra-ready by the time that they enter middle school and high school,” she said, adding that at least one principal reported that participating children truly enjoy the program. “And the teachers bring up the great math progress they’re seeing from students who work with the math tutors.”

She added that students who are not involved in the program regularly ask if they could join. 

Tutors are paid an hourly rate and qualify for full benefits. Most assist third- through fifth-grade students and two of the six work with younger children. All have strong ties to the district and were carefully chosen, Arenas said. 

“We were looking for that connection and that investment in Oakland and OUSD,” she said. “We also wanted our tutors to represent the community that they serve.”

Some are graduates while others have children in the district. Math tutor Janine Godfrey, 55, works primarily at Garfield Elementary School. She said she helps children better understand their lessons and maintain their focus on the subject during class. 

“I chose this work because I have spent the last three years working through the middle school math curriculum with my son and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed math and teaching,” said Godfrey, who has run her own catering business for 25 years. “It felt like it was time to give back to the community and this felt like a perfect fit for me.”

Godfrey said she’s been moved by the students’ openness and by their ability to forge a solid bond with her.

“I truly hope that the work we have done together will somehow inspire them to work hard in math — and perhaps even enjoy it once in a while,” she said. 

As part of the new tutoring effort, Oakland REACH launched a series of outreach-focused “Math Mindset” meetings at the Think College Now Elementary School campus. 

The organization uses the time to help parents confront their own insecurities around the subject — they remind participants of the groundbreaking strides and cultures made in the topic — as a means to improve their own students’ success. 

REACH secured several respected math educators of color to inspire families, Young said, adding that she hopes the gatherings will also serve to identify possible math tutors. 

Recruitment has been a challenge as many people in the Oakland school community identify themselves as “bad at math,”&�Բ�����; an idea that leaves parents thinking they can’t help their children progress in the subject, Young said.  

“We have to employ a different strategy when it comes to bringing our communities along in math,” she said. “We need to do the work of building the confidence and awareness they need to feel like math is something in my ancestry.”

Young said REACH’s math-related efforts will extend beyond the school year as the organization recently secured a summertime partnership with the district. SummerBOOST will allow math tutoring at two pilot sites serving some 350 children in kindergarten through fourth grade. 

Children all over the country have long struggled with math. Systemic inequity has caused Black, Hispanic and poor children to fall behind even further than their peers nationwide, a gap that grew worse because of the pandemic. Fourth-grade NAEP scores fell a stunning five points in 2022 from 2019. Eighth graders suffered an eight-point drop in that same time period, erasing decades of growth.

Results are equally troubling in the Oakland district: scored proficient on the 2022-23 state math assessments. High school students fared even worse, with just 14.11% of 11th graders reaching that same benchmark.  

“The mindset shift is key,” Young said. 

Young started REACH eight years ago with the goal of empowering Black and brown families to advocate for a high-quality education for their children. During the pandemic, REACH launched the Virtual Family Hub, providing online learning opportunities to families that resulted in significant literacy gains for students. 

In its December 2021 Hub parent satisfaction survey, 88% of families wanted more math intervention support for their children. So, after crafting an effective literacy model, the group turned its attention to math. 

“Let’s go back to K-2 when they are most flexible around deficits and excited about learning,” Young said. “This is a full frontal attack.”

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies provide financial support to The Oakland REACH and ����Ӱ��.