A Manhattan elementary school transformed by an influx of new migrant families has created a new Thanksgiving tradition that aims to bring everyone together over turkey, stuffing, Dominican-style roast pork and pierogis.
In the gym at P.S. 145 on the Upper West Side on Monday, kids, parents and staff lined up at long banquet tables, filling their plates with food beneath twinkle lights hung on basketball hoops. Platters overflowed with Thanksgiving fare, along with plantains and Ukrainian meatballs.
“We make sure to have your traditional meal for Thanksgiving, but then we also have some Dominican food, and we have Russian food, just to really make sure that all of the families feel a little touch of home, especially for those who are newly arrived to our school community,” said the school’s principal, Natalia Garcia.
P.S. 145 offers an English track for neighborhood kids, plus Spanish and Russian dual language programs. Garcia said over the past two years, the school has received a surge of new arrivals from “war-torn countries” who speak Spanish, Russian and Ukrainian.
The Department of Education does not track students’ immigration status, but says that 48,000 children in temporary housing have newly enrolled at the public schools in just over two years. “We don’t ask families to share their immigration status or country of origin with us, period,” said education department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein.
The total number of homeless students in public schools reached a record 146,000 in the previous school year, according to data released earlier this month by the advocacy group Advocates for Children of New York.
At P.S. 145, about 160 students who live in shelters have joined since 2022 when the migrant crisis began, according to Garcia. Initially, the school offered the Thanksgiving feast just to the new arrivals as a way to build community over a hot meal. Last year, the school invited all students, parents and staff to the feast.
Hundreds of people packed the gym on Monday to celebrate.
“Food is one thing that brings all communities together,” Garcia said. “Everyone gets hungry. Everyone loves to eat.”
The Thanksgiving event is just one of the ways the school has swung into action to serve the new students. Shelters don’t have laundry rooms, so for several months, teachers took homeless children’s laundry home. Then the school installed washing machines. Parents organized clothing drives and teachers offered emotional support, as well as instruction.
“They were so broken with that experience,” Spanish dual language teacher Elaine Beckerman said about her students’ journeys to the Mexican border. She said she emphasized to them that they are safe now.
Accommodating all the new students came with other challenges, too. As P.S. 145 grew, classrooms got crowded and the city decided to move another school that was co-located in the building to a new site. That school, West Prep Academy, served mostly Black and Latino students and had a program for autism. Some parents were angry that migrant students were pushing out other vulnerable kids.
Garcia said she’s been able to create integrated arts and science classes now that the school has more space, so that children from the dual language programs can mix with each other and kids from the neighborhood more.
PTA co-President Lauren Balaban said her son, who’s in the Spanish dual language program, has started showing off some Russian words at home. “Everyone’s blending in,” she said.
The migrant families who spoke to Gothamist asked that their children’s last names be withheld due to fear of deportation.
Vadim, a fourth grader in the Russian dual language program, said he likes P.S. 145 because they host “cool parties like this.” His parents, activists who opposed the war in Ukraine, fled Russia and arrived in New York in January. His mother said it was her first time eating turkey. “The turkey was delicious,” she said.
But amid the festivities, there are also new worries. A mother named Kate said she, her wife and two children came to the United States from Russia because they did not feel safe as an LGBTQ family. She’s thrilled to be part of the community at P.S. 145. Her 7-year-old son can now read and write in English and Russian, and he’s made friends with a diverse group of kids. “It’s cool to have friends from different places in the world … and everyone knows that we are an LGBTQ family, and it’s OK,” Kate said.
But Kate said she is concerned about what the new year will bring with President-elect Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations. She hopes they’ll be able to stay at PS 145.
“We don’t know what it will be for us,” she said. “We don’t know, but we hope.”