The view from the quad

The visa debacle’s aftermath … $100 million to go … And a zoo day sounds awesome.

Arizona State University officials have spent years patting themselves on the back for attracting so many international students.

Those students bring in a lot of money, and they give the school a scholarly, global sheen. But when the Trump administration started revoking thousands of student visas across the country earlier this year, including at least 100 at ASU, those same officials didn’t really go to bat for them.

Instead, ASU administrators sent a blunt email on June 6 urging international students to get back inside the U.S. by June 9, and stay there until they graduate. If not, the Trump administration might revoke their visas and they wouldn’t be able to return to school.

The visa purge was part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on both immigration and universities. All of a sudden, university administrators from Arizona to Maine were scrambling to deal with the fallout and uncertainty caused by the visa revocations.

But what about the students themselves? They were all watching the federal government attempt a nationwide purge. But they didn’t get nearly as much attention from the press as the administrators did.

We reached out to international students at ASU to get their perspective, but unsurprisingly, most of them were too worried about their visa status to have their names appear in the news.

One international student, Raghav, said the email from ASU administrators urging them to get back to the U.S. on just a few days’ notice didn’t do much.

“I don’t think the recent scare would’ve made anyone change their plans,” said Raghav, who asked only to be identified by their first name. “International travel plans are made months in advance, unlike domestic, so recent events do not cause sudden changes.”

To avoid putting a target on their backs, some international students have taken to posting anonymously on online publications and forums like Reddit, which has become a hub for students who want to vent.

Reddit user @ForkzUp shared the news of last month’s email to international students and got hundreds of upvotes and numerous comments criticizing the Trump administration’s role in all of it.

Other users have become so desperate they’re asking the ASU Reddit community for advice on handling mental health during ongoing turmoil.

Three months ago, @Quirky_Sandwich_1954 received almost 100 comments after acknowledging the toll that losing visas had taken on ASU international students.

“I’m an undergraduate international student here with anxiety and just recovered from depression. The visa revoked drama recently is really terrible for my mental health. Right now I am on depression medication, should I visit a therapist or the school counseling? I could really use some suggestions,” the user’s post said.

The State Press, ASU’s independent student news organization, published anonymous thoughts from an international student before the start of summer, which gave a more concrete look at how students on visas were feeling.

“In real time, I can see that all the protections I thought I had are fading away,” one student wrote. “The University that is meant to represent my interests is caving under the demands of a presidential administration … and reading the thoughts of people online about the administration only makes me feel like my opinions are in the minority.”

While ASU students were having mental health crises, what did ASU President Michael Crow have to say about it all?

He wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that was a full-throated defense of… Alexander Hamilton.

Crow dug deep to explain why international students are valuable, going all the way back to Hamilton sailing to what would become the United States so he could study.

And he highlighted the centuries of economic contributions made by international students. That would include more than $900 million added to Arizona’s economy by international students at colleges around the state, the Arizona Republic’s Helen Rummel reported this week.

But Crow’s op-ed didn’t include one critical word about Trump. No demanding that the president leave his students alone, or saying it was outrageous to willy-nilly upend people’s lives just because they weren’t born here.

Instead, Crow offered a lukewarm critique of the officials in Trump’s administration, as if they weren’t doing exactly what the president told them to do.

“President Trump has often expressed support for international students, most recently saying that he has always been in favor of students coming in from other countries,” Crow wrote. “His administration, however, is serving up policy that could restrict the entry of talented immigrants who would become catalysts for American innovation.”

As ASU and the University of Arizona have taken steps to comply with the Trump administration’s demands, students have taken notice, as the Arizona Capitol Times’ Jamar Younger reported over the weekend.

Alberto Plantillas, the central regional director for the Arizona Students’ Association, had some harsh words for the university administrators who took those steps.

“The conservative policies on campus are starting to align more closely with the federal government’s policies. And, to me, it really seems like they’re kind of caving in to a lot of these things so they’re not targeted in the future,” Plantillas said. “And I think that’s just a very bad position for universities to be at.”

For now, Trump’s fixation on universities has stayed mostly on the East Coast, and that’s where student news publications are raising a ruckus.

The student newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania wasn’t happy with their school for bowing to the Trump administration’s demands last week.

The school settled a dispute with federal officials by removing transgender athlete Lia Thomas’ swimming records and vowing to adopt “biology-based definitions for ‘male’ and ‘female’” to comply with Trump’s executive orders.

In exchange, the school got back $175 million that the Trump administration had frozen.

The Daily Pennsylvanian’s editorial board wrote on Friday that the school should have followed the path set by Harvard, which is fighting back in court right now, and putting $2 billion at risk.

“But in the following decades, people will remember Harvard as the school that stood up to tyranny. Penn — if this pattern continues — will be remembered as the school that welcomed it with open arms,” the Daily Pennsylvanian editorial board wrote.

Now that the federal government has decided to offer its own school voucher program to states, it’s up to each governor to decide whether to opt-in to the program.

That was a last-minute concession made by school choice hardliners in the Senate, who were pushing for a nationwide program. And it sets up an awkward choice for the governors of blue and purple states, like Gov. Katie Hobbs.

If she decides Arizona should opt-in, parents could tap into a virtually limitless pool of federal money. But that also could signal Hobbs is softening on the concept of school vouchers, which she has adamantly opposed.

So far, Hobbs is staying mum about whether Arizona will participate in the federal voucher program.

Her office didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment from ASU’s Cronkite News in their story about the federal voucher program. And Hobbs didn’t answer questions from Axios Phoenix about whether Arizona would opt-in.

Hobbs’ choice is made even more complicated by the fact that she is gearing up for a re-election run next year.

She’ll face Republican candidates who view vouchers as a key part of the school choice program, and Democratic voters who say vouchers are siphoning away much-needed funding for public schools.

Thawing funds: The big news in Arizona’s education world this week was the unfreezing of millions of dollars of federal funds. The Trump administration had withheld about $132 million from Arizona schools, out of nearly $7 billion nationwide. Federal officials said some schools were using the money to support a “radical leftwing agenda,” like teaching English to immigrants or offering after-school programs. On Friday, the Trump administration released $1.3 billion, the Associated Press reported, although nearly $100 million that was destined for Arizona schools remains frozen, AZFamily reported. Some of that still-frozen money would pay for school resource officers, although Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said the state could “easily” cover the cost.

Tough task: Do you think a dozen people is enough to manage $1 billion in spending? That’s how many people are reviewing purchases in Arizona’s school voucher program, KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky reports. Voucher program director John Ward told the Joint Legislative Audit Committee this week that the U.S. Department of Education has hundreds of employees to review a similar amount of money. Ward said the staff shortage at the state means they’re “always in survival mode.” The recently approved state budget didn’t include any money to hire more people to oversee the voucher program.

You can hire more reporters to oversee the voucher program by clicking that button.

Elections have consequences: After voters rejected budget overrides last fall, two Arizona school districts are making big budget cuts and eliminating positions, ABC15’s Elenee Dao reports. The Deer Valley Unified School District is looking at cutting $11 million annually for the next three years, while the Higley Unified School District is cutting about $5 million. Voters in the Deer Valley district had approved the override for more than 30 years, but last year was the second time in a row that voters rejected it, which the district superintendent attributed to the “anti-public school movement” growing in Arizona.

Thrown out: The state Court of Appeals threw out Horne’s challenge to Arizona schools’ dual-language immersion program, saying Horne lacked standing to sue, the Arizona Mirror’s Gloria Rebecca Gomez writes. Horne says he’s going to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

New world: How will the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education affect Tucson-area school districts? The Flowing Wells Unified School District is up first, Tucson Sentinel columnist Blake Morlock writes. They’re plotting out how to deal with several grant programs that could end up with no money in their budgets, thanks to federal funding freezes.

Thanks to this week’s sponsor, Education Forward Arizona! They gather an amazing amount of data on Arizona’s schools and co-own the Arizona Education Progress Meter, which you can peruse here.

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Arizona Schools Can’t Afford to Wait for Federal Education Funds

Federal Title funds are an essential lifeline for Arizona schools that support students from low-income families, English language learners, and migrant communities with vital services like tutoring, before- and after-school programs, and educator training.

Earlier this month, districts were notified — with just one day’s notice — that some of these funds would not arrive on July 1, leaving schools in limbo just as the year begins.

The Trump administration initially froze more than $6.8 billion in federal education funds nationwide. In response, Arizona joined 23 other states in suing the Trump administration over its decision to freeze the funds.

Thanks to bipartisan pressure, a portion of those dollars — mainly tied to after-school and summer programs — was released last week.

However, roughly $5.5 billion remains frozen, including the core Title grants that schools depend on most.

Education Forward Arizona is calling for the immediate release of all allocated Title funds.

These dollars are not optional; they are essential investments in equity, student success, and the future of our state. The longer we wait, the deeper the damage.

Learn more about the funding freeze and what it will mean for Arizona’s students by checking out Education Forward Arizona’s full statement and website.

If you’d like to sponsor an edition of the Education Agenda, get in touch!

Have you ever learned to identify a bird species, and then you see it everywhere you go?

That’s the goal for grade-school students who go to Camp Zoo, KTAR’s Shira Tanzer reports.

They head to the Phoenix Zoo and learn about all the animals and plants that thrive in the Sonoran Desert, and how they all fit together to form an ecosystem, including in their own backyards.

They also get to “create their own critter,” instructor Kami Lee said. The students watch how the animals live at the zoo and then they design shelter, food supply and activities to keep their critter happy.