Saugus Schools No Longer Require Census Participation to Enroll New Students

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Saugus Public Schools, located just outside Boston, will no longer require families to fill out a town census as a condition of enrollment after being sued on the grounds the practice discriminated against immigrant children and other vulnerable students.

Saugus’s policy change goes against a torrent of federal and state initiatives aimed at limiting educational access to newcomers, particularly those in the country illegally. The Trump administration has detained and deported K-12 students and recently barred undocumented preschoolers from Head Start and older students from career, technical and adult education. In many states, those federal directives have been put on hold pending a Sept. 3 hearing.

The Saugus school registration requirement was challenged in court last year by Lawyers for Civil Rights, Massachusetts Advocates for Children and Anderson & Kreiger LLP. The state attorney general’s office also aided in the effort. 

“We are ecstatic,” said Erika Richmond Walton, an attorney with Lawyers for Civil Rights, who added that her group will continue to monitor school enrollment to ensure every family can register “without fear or unnecessary hurdles.”

Neither district officials nor multiple Saugus school board members responded to The 74’s requests for comment. They’ve stated previously that their enrollment procedures followed the law. 

Richmond Walton said the school’s turnaround came as a shock: In a recent admissions policy directive, it omitted the census clause. The enrollment-focused document instead centered on proof of residence and the district’s desire to ferret out anyone not living within its borders.

“It did come as a surprise to me,” she said. “It was a fight we had been fighting for well over a year.”

The new development in the Saugus case coincides with the state’s recent adoption of the Protect Education Equity Bill, which affirms the educational rights of immigrant children and students with disabilities. Undocumented students’ right to attend school is already enshrined in the landmark 1982 Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe, but that ruling is under attack in some conservative states. 

“This law comes at a time of rising federal threats to civil rights,” Massachusetts Advocates for Children said about the state’s initiative, which was signed by Gov. Maura Healey on Aug. 5. “While federal protections for immigrant students and students with disabilities are in jeopardy, Massachusetts has taken a bold stand to ensure that those rights remain protected here at home.”

In Saugus, Walton said the district required families to fill out a census form as part of a local headcount conducted every year. In order to comply, she said, they had to get the document from town hall. Once they did, she said, the town would initiate an inspection of their living quarters. 

A family with an elementary-aged child was barred from completing the form because they were heating their home with space heaters, she said. In another case, one family was doubled up with another, and the one that sought to enroll a child was not the leaseholder, which disqualified them. Both were eventually allowed to attend school when Massachusetts Advocates for Children intervened.

Adam Strom, executive director of Boston-based Re-Imagining Migration, said the district’s reversal is critical.

“It protects something fundamental: every child’s right to attend school,” Strom said. “No student should have their education held hostage by discriminatory policies.”

Students of all ages have been targeted for deportation across the country since the start of the year. Some have been in federal detention for weeks, with limited access to family while others have been removed from the United States entirely. 

Earlier this summer, a Massachusetts teen on his way to volleyball practice was detained by immigration agents before winning his release. 

The Saugus school district served 2,462 students in 2023, up from 2,297 in 2021. Nearly 30% of the student body was identified as Hispanic or Latino two years ago, up from 20.6% in 2021. 

Just under 10% were English learners in 2023, up from 6.3% two years prior. 

The school superintendent’s secretary, Dianne Vargas, told The 74 a year ago that the census requirement was waived for incoming immigrant students. 

But, she said then, the district did require other forms of paperwork meant to protect these students’ welfare so the district could “make sure they are with a parent or guardian — that they actually have someone who is caring for them so we don’t have doubling up and people aren’t passing children around.” 

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