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Hartford Schools Prepare For Influx Of Puerto Rican Students

Jessica Hill
/
Hill
Elionet Saez Martin of Puerto Rico at his desk in his kindergarten class at Chamberlain Elementary School in New Britain on Friday. Before Hurricane Maria hit, his mother flew him and his 9-year-old brother to Connecticut to be with their grandfather.

The superintendent of Hartford Public Schools is preparing for an influx of Puerto Rican students as their families flee the island following Hurricane Maria.

Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodríguez says she quickly assembled a Puerto Rico Crisis Response team to figure out how to ease the transition students.

“It is a major change for any child, any family to migrate to the United States. So we have to be mindful of that, and the impact of that change, and even trauma, given the natural disaster, can have a child’s learning and the way they adapt.”

Dr. Torres-Rodriguez says she’s assembling bilingual and bicultural support staff for the Puerto Rican students.

“Of course social and emotional support...identifying ways that we can provide the short-term intervention that is needed for our students. And that’s going to require us that we check in with our many community-based organizations to identify how we can attend to behavioral health needs in our schools in ways that our students are not stigmatized.”

Seven percent of Connecticut’s population is of Puerto Rican descent, the highest percentage of any state in the nation.

Earlier this week, Governor Dannel Malloy issued guidance to schools across the state to help them integrate the Puerto Rican students and make sure they have access to immediate school and services. The guidance covers students coming from any area affected by recent hurricanes.