Central NJ schools seeing flood of non-English speaking new students (Opinions)

Is it a coincidence that in the last two years schools in various parts of the country including New Jersey are seeing parents and kids showing up on the first day of school who can't speak a word of English?

Could there be a connection between the estimated 4.9 million illegal border crossings in the last year and a half?

Some teachers and administrators, people pretty good at critical thinking and math suspect there might be a connection.

We're hearing stories from administrators from at least one suburban school district in Central Jersey of a hundred parents coming to register their kids for the new school year in the last two days.

Reportedly, parents are coming to school on the first day with little or no verified ID, no confirmed permanent address and the schools must register them as directed by the state of New Jersey. One particular school has one ESL teacher for an entire high school and teachers are directed to ask other students to translate for the newly arrived students.

These kids are from El Salvador, Honduras and overwhelmingly from Guatemala.

If teachers and administrators are noticing a major spike in kids showing up last minute, unprepared and undocumented then there might be something going on here that most people wouldn't notice.

We are not a border state like Texas, Arizona or California, but with the overwhelming number of illegal border crossings in the last year and a half we may be getting a taste of what those states deal with.

We hope these kids will be safe and prosperous contributors to society, but we also hope they fix the border crisis soon, because this kind of thing can't continue to happen unabated.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Dennis Malloy only.