Across San Diego County, school district leaders have been bolstering their systems for how to deal with immigration enforcement, spurred by rising arrests in local communities and by new state laws and legal guidance. After months of escalating enforcement actions, some near local schools, new legi slation aims to protect children at school and create plans for what to do if their families are targeted. By March, school districts across California are supposed to implement new guidance from the attorney general, including by clearly marking non-public areas and codifying a system for refusing access to immigration officers. So far, progress toward those goals varies. But some local schools have gone further. In Oceanside Unified, where most students are Latino and about one in every eight students is learning English, leaders have recently begun giving front-office staff at schools much more training in what to do when immigration officers arrive, and how to track such encounters. “How do you document?” said Jordy Sparks, the district’s executive director of diversity, equity, inclusion and student supports. “What do you record? We have a script that basically front office staff can walk through.” At schools such as Mission Elementary, where students are seen walking to class on Dec. 18, 2025, Oceanside Unified has been working to label non-public areas that are off-limits to federal officers. (John Gastaldo / For the San Diego Union-Tribune) The district requires staff to fill out and submit a form — first rolled out in 2018 but updated over the years — any time they interact with law enforcement. It hasn’t yet had to use them, because there have been no incidents of enforcement on campuses so far. The district has also put more security in place. Visitors must be buzzed in by staff in order to enter past the front office. Front-office signs have been updated, and signs have gone up to identify areas restricted to students and staff. Sparks said there’s training for all schools and all staff around areas like awareness building and education code. But there’s also an optional training led by the district’s immigration response team, which he’s on, that delves further into what staff can do as community members. “There are opportunities for you to look out for your school community in the actual physical geographic area of your school — organizations locally that you can partner with,” he said. Many local educators have been getting involved in such groups. Across San Diego County, a growing number of teachers have joined efforts to patrol neighborhoods for immigration enforcement activity in their time off work. Sparks said Oceanside Unified had historically done a lot of work to educate families about their rights. But in the last year, it has also begun working more closely with community organizations that are already working to help families make preparedness plans, he added — “more preventative and proactive work.” School counselor Juan Orozco and teacher Dawn Miller, both with the San Diego County Office of Education, conduct patrols around the community of Lincoln Park on Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2025. (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) School leaders have been on heightened alert ever since President Trump took office early last year and rescinded a longtime policy that prevented immigration enforcement at schools. California lawmakers responded this year by passing a spate of legislation that aims to limit federal officers’ access to schools, protect students and their families from the administration’s broader immigration crackdown and create plans for what to do if families are targeted for enforcement. State law bars immigration officers from entering a school without a judicial warrant, subpoena or court order, and staff cannot disclose information about a student unless officers have one. As part of the new legislation, Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office issued a 59-page document of updated guidance that schools must adopt by March 1. Under it, schools must clearly mark non-public areas and not allow agents of immigration enforcement access to those areas. “Immigration enforcement threats have led immigrant families to ask whether it is safe to send their children to school,” the guidance says. “Although California cannot control the actions of federal immigration enforcement agencies, federal and California laws empower schools to welcome all students and to reassure them of their educational rights and opportunities.” Sparks said some of the changes in guidance are things that districts have already been doing, including on student confidentiality, data sharing and access to private or sensitive areas of the school. “That’s board policy that most school districts have in place already, so it’s just a matter of how strongly it’s enforced,” he said. For a number of districts, much of the updated guidance largely reflects what they’re already doing. San Diego Unified, by far the county’s largest district, says it is already doing much of what the attorney general calls for, but staff are closely reviewing to see if they need to make further changes. Fabiola Bagula, center, the superintendent of San Diego Unified School District, speaks about the arrest of a parent by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) near Linda Vista Elementary School at a press conference outside the school the following day, Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (Michael Ho / The San Diego Union-Tribune) Vista Unified planned some minor policy revisions as part of its regular updates this month, said Shawn Loescher, assistant superintendent of business and operations support. San Dieguito Union High School District’s policies and practices have been aligned with the new guidance for years, particularly on law enforcement access and the handling of student records, said spokesperson Edwin Mendoza. Ahead of the March deadline, the district is focused on “refinements,” he said. Not every district has found implementing the new guidance such a straightforward update.  In Grossmont Union High School District, an East County high school district with a large immigrant and refugee population, school board meetings generally play host to straightforward votes where members of a conservative majority rarely openly disagree with each other. But last month, debate over the district’s policy on how to handle immigration enforcement — drafted to comply with the updated state guidance — led to a rare public debate over policy. Trustees debated how to balance support for students and for law enforcement, while also making sure not to place too much of the onus of compliance on individual district staff. They ultimately decided to table the draft policy and pushed a vote to a later date to address concerns from the board members. Grossmont Union High School District board trustees Chris Fite, Jim Kelly, Scott Eckert, Robert Shield and Gary Woods during a board meeting at Grossmont High School on Thursday, July 17, 2025, in El Cajon. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune) Scott Eckert, who brought the proposed policy before the board and said he had worked with staff on its language, said that the goal was to ensure students and staff knew there was a plan in place to take care of them should federal immigration officers come to their school. “That’s not anti-ICE, that’s pro-student,” he said. Grossmont spokesperson Collin McGlashen said district staff were incorporating feedback from the “thoughtful” board discussion and hope a draft will be ready for the Jan. 15 meeting.  “The attorney general’s guidance has been carefully reviewed as part of this process,” he wrote. “Staff training on the updated policy will follow shortly after final adoption.” In Oceanside, Sparks thinks families can find reassurance in knowing they follow federal laws such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which regulates access to students’ records, along with state law and school policies on what can be shared with law enforcement. “Obviously, if there’s a subpoena involved or a judicial warrant, that would be something we consider,” he said. “But we just try to reassure them that nothing’s immediate.” School officials also remind families of physical barriers, including signs, cameras and the protections afforded by front-office staff. “It’s just assuring families that once your kids are at school, there’s a whole other layer of safety that’s in place, in terms of their information and also their physical safety,” Sparks said. Experts have cautioned that fears of immigration of enforcement can hurt school attendance. A 2018 survey from the UCLA Civil Rights Project found that 84% of respondents said students had expressed concerns about enforcement. Patricia Gandara, a UCLA professor and co-director of its Civil Rights Project, previously expressed concern to the Union-Tribune that fear could depress attendance but also said families do put trust in their children’s schools. Sparks argues that trust can help ensure the opposite result: Families depend on their school community’s awareness to safely navigate back and forth between work and school. “People feel like schools are safer places for students to be, and families have to work,” he said. “They have to go about their daily life.” ...read more read less