Samantha Clark is PTA co-president of PS 172, Beacon School of Excellence, the gym of which will be used as a migrant shelter.
“Mommy, why are they taking away our gym?”
For my 5-year-old son, no question is too big or complicated — even at 6:30 a.m.
My answer is what our small Brooklyn elementary school has been grappling with since Sunday, when parents received a form letter announcing that our tiny gym was becoming a shelter due to the influx of asylum seekers.
This gym has only one adult-sized toilet and zero showers.
It has an active construction zone that creates an evacuation safety issue in the gym.
And it is connected to our main school building, which is so overutilized and desperate for space that we’re using storage closets as therapy spaces.
Schools should not be used as shelters for asylum seekers. Period.
Children come to school to learn, play and grow.
Asylum seekers come to this country for a chance at a better life.
Neither are served by a building surrounded by active construction and missing basic sanitation for adults.
It is unfair to everyone involved, and it is not a sacrifice that our mayor should ask anyone to make.
Our school is already directly across the street from an asylum shelter, and while we have worked to provide a warm and compassionate welcome, our resources and infrastructure are feeling the pressure.
We need Mayor Adams to find alternate sites for asylum seekers — ones that are safe and have age-appropriate facilities, but more important, ones that are not concentrated in the same neighborhoods, like Sunset Park.
If New York City is truly a sanctuary city as Mayor Adams so proudly professes, why are only certain areas bearing the weight and not others?
What kind of sanctuary are we providing when we’re using elementary schools without the space or ability to let someone shower?
Also, as parents, we need to be treated with the respect we deserve when the city makes major decisions involving our children.
At our school, we have had little to no communication from the mayor’s office or the Department of Education in regards to our school’s situation.
Representatives that we manage to speak to say they’re given no information either —apparently no one knows what’s going on or how to manage it.
We need clear, timely information so that we can make the best decisions for the children that depend on us.
Our country’s immigration crisis is a complex issue, but at least I know how to answer my son: “Asylum seekers are here because they need our help.
We need our leaders to find the right, safe way to do that. And that is not putting a shelter in our school gym.”
This story originally appeared on NYPost
