Feb 242010
State lawmakers voted Wednesday to force public schools to count how many students are in this country illegally, the first step toward challenging federal law that requires schools to educate all, legal and otherwise.
Officially, Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, said SB1097, approved on a 5-2 margin by the Senate Committee on Education Accountability and Reform, is simply a fact-finding mission. He said there are lots of guesses but no actual data on how many of the approximately 1 million students in Arizona schools are neither U.S. citizens nor legal residents.
