FRANKFORD: American schools are scrambling to provide services to the large number of children and teenagers who crossed the border alone in recent months.

The influx comes after the US Supreme Court ruled that schools have an obligation to educate all students regardless of their immigration status. Educators say many of these students who fled poverty and violence have years-long gaps in schooling. For teenagers, learning in English can prove more difficult than for younger students.

They also may be living with relatives or others they didn’t know, and the workings of an American school can be confusing.

Others experienced trauma, either in their home country or while crossing the border, and may need mental health help. “It’s a new culture and they already feel that they are alone. ... Some of them don’t have their parents here,” said English language instructor Alina Miron at Broadmoor High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The school has about a dozen of these students enrolled. Large numbers of migrant teens have moved to metropolitan areas such as Washington, Miami and Houston, but also to communities of all sizes in nearly every state, according to federal data.

That’s because most typically go live with a relative or guardian while their case makes its way through the immigration courts system — a process that can take years.Schools have had to hire new English language instructors and create special classes to more quickly assimilate the migrant students.

At the G.W. Education Centre in Delaware, teenagers ride a school bus, practice food names with the school cafeteria manager and recite the names of body parts in gym class — all part of an English immersion newcomers programme.

Published in Dawn, September 30th , 2014