As President-Elect Donald Trump promises a mass deportation effort starting in cities like Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado Denver Public Schools (DPS) leaders vow to protect their immigrant students.During a work session meeting on November 7, DPS Board of Education member Scott Esserman addressed the crowd, saying the board is committed to the safety and security of immigrant students."If you are a student who is undocumented or a family who is undocumented, we will take care of you. That is our responsibility; were here to do that. I think its important that you hear that," Esserman said during the work session.According to data provided to the Board of Education, 4,763 New to Country students were enrolled during the 2023-2024 school year. By the end of that school year, 83% of those students were still enrolled in DPS.There was a sharp increase in New to Country students compared to the prior school year.A large number of those students came after the state's October count, so we were not funded for those students. So that required moving resources around, getting personnel into additional buildings, and spending that out of reserves and operating funds, as opposed to what would normally get from the state per pupil," Esserman said. Fortunately, the state legislature at the end of the session passed additional funding to the tune of, I believe it was 24 million statewide, distributed proportionally based on how many students had come into the district. So we got sort of some backfill after the end of last legislative session.Esserman said a large percentage of those students from the 2023-2024 school year are still within DPS. Of the 3,941 New to Country students enrolled at the end of the 2023-2024 school year, 80% were still with DPS as of September 30.The number of students that we saw [in 2023-2024] was directly related to the number of buses that were being sent from Texas to Denver, and we know that number has decreased greatly," Esserman said. It's often not people who sought to come to Denver, but people who sought to leave where they were, and they ended up arriving, crossing the border, and being pushed to different cities, including Denver.During the influx of immigrant students, Esserman said some DPS schools were over capacity. However, he said the district was prepared to welcome these students."In part because of the existence of the modified consent decree whereby we have English language acquisition, Spanish speaking classrooms across the district, where we have a large portion of faculty of educators who speak Spanish, where we had the community hubs that had opened the previous year that were that were distributing all sorts of resources," Esserman said. There's no question, it was overwhelming for a lot of our educators, who are committed to serving every kid who comes in their classroom, regardless of how many kids are in their classroom, regardless of what their circumstances are. But we were well positioned as a district, so it was shifting resources and not creating them.Esserman said there are distinct ways school districts can protect their students regardless of their immigration status.We know we have the legal authority to not allow ICE in any of our buildings. We know that we have the legal authority to not share student data. We know that we can do what we can to ensure that we're not participating whatsoever in these efforts and that we're doing everything we can to ensure that these families not just feel, but are, safe," said Esserman.Esserman added that school districts do not track immigration status either."Legally, we're not allowed to do so. We're not even allowed to track income level, right? Esserman explained. While we have a large picture, high-level idea of how many free and reduced lunch students we have, we don't track who those students specifically are, who those families specifically are.According to Esserman, his goal is to ensure that DPS children are protected no matter what happens on the federal level.We have kids who are here, who deserve to learn and deserve to go to school and deserve to feel safe," said Esserman. Whatever data we have, we will not share, and we have the legal authority and the legal right to not share. 'Taking care of children': Denver Public Schools board member vows to protect immigrant students