WEST SPRINGFIELD – With an influx of Puerto Rican evacuees flooding the hotels and motels of West Springfield, a Town Council subcommittee is asking state lawmakers for help with educating the children living in these hotels.

Hurricane Maria, a powerful Category 4 hurricane with 150 mph winds, made direct landfall on Puerto Rico on Sep. 20 – devastating the entire island. The storm, which was labeled the fifth-strongest storm to ever hit the U.S., knocked out 80 percent of the island’s power for months – forcing thousands of families to flee.

Since around October, hundreds of evacuees have moved to Greater Springfield, a well-established Latino community. Because of the vast number of hotels and motels in West Springfield, many of which are funded through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s Transitional Shelter Assistance program, the city has become a hot spot for displaced Puerto Rican families.

West Springfield currently has 148 homeless students, according to the School Committee, 84 of whom are evacuees. About 70 of the evacuees are living in city hotels or motels, while the remaining 14 are living in local housing or doubling up with family.

Massachusetts state law requires municipalities to educate the homeless students living in hotels within their respective districts. Because of this law, combined with the abundance of city hotels, West Springfield schools are overwhelmed by the sudden influx of students, said District 4 Councilor Daniel M. O’Brien.

“We’re bursting at the seams, nobody prepared to take in this many new students midyear,” he said. “We’ve had a homeless population before, but it’s never been an emergency like this – it’s almost like an immigration wave. You have an unprecedented number of people coming in and it has a rippling effect on all the services.”

Larger cities like Springfield and Holyoke, which have estimated populations of around 155,000 and 40,000, are better suited to handle more students, he said. However, smaller communities like West Springfield, with a population of 28,000, have reached their limit.  

O’Brien, who is also the vice chairman of the Town Council’s Ordinance & Policy Committee, said it’s a challenge to afford to educate the evacuee students because they didn’t prepare for this when formulating the budget last spring. While providing housing for the evacuees isn’t an issue, said the councilor, it’s finding the money to hire more teachers and find more buses to accommodate them.

“We need more language instructors and more counselors to help with the transition,” he said. “Because this whole thing happened so violently for these kids, they’re kind of disoriented. Imagine you used to live where you lived, and now you live in a hotel room – there is a lot of psychological things associated with that. We’re trying to find creative ways to get space but you can only be so creative.”

O’Brien said city officials need to work with state lawmakers to find a solution to provide the students living in these situations better access to education.

The District 4 councilor is making a home-rule petition to the state to propose a “population-based cap” for emergency situations in which homeless students living in city hotels can be more evenly distributed to the schools throughout the region.  

“We’re a commonwealth, we share the good times and the difficult times,” he said. “It’s not fair to either party if they’re [the students] sitting on top of each other just because we have x amount of hotel rooms due to our geography. The cost can be shared by other communities that presently don’t have any hotels – it’s spreading the costs out.”

According to town officials, West Springfield Public Schools will need at least $150,000 in immediate funding.

State Sen. James Welch – who represents Agawam, Chicopee, Springfield and West Springfield, all of which have taken in around 700 evacuees in total – told Reminder Publications he’s been working closely with other state and federal agencies, as well as with the individual communities, to address the issue.

The state Sen. said it’s important to calculate the accommodation costs for each of the communities, and to figure out which type of information the communities should be collecting.

“We certainly understand the concerns on a community level,” he said. “Every community wants to help to do their part, since we are a commonwealth. But the responsibility typically ends up falling on the communities that have more affordable housing, or more access to hotels. So, we want to make sure that any community that’s stepping up and doing the right thing – like West Springfield – is reimbursed adequately for it and that they have all the necessary resources they need.”

Welch said he hopes the state can provide assistance through either a supplemental budget sometime next month, or potentially through their main fiscal budget later on in the year. He said it’s a top priority to advocate for more resources, funding and reimbursements for the communities that are dealing with major influxes of evacuees.

Welch said he would continue to work closely with local communities.

“It’s a very difficult situation, but to the credit of the local leaders – both in the schools and from the town side on the administration –  they have really been willing to do what they can to make sure all of these children feel welcome and to make the best out of it.”

Councilman O’Brien said he hopes to finish the draft for the petition to the state soon, and plans to submit it to the Council as soon as possible.