Friday, December 31, 2021

Does Texas spend more for services to undocumented immigrants than they yield in taxes?

This piece shows just how much of a stretch it is for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to foster an incorrect and pejorative view of undocumented immigrants crossing our Southern border. Were this not so, he would have included in his analysis the revenue generated by undocumented immigrants' through the sales taxes that they pay.

Against various credible sources of data, Paxton's distorted and politically self-interested conclusion is that undocumented immigrants cost Texans more than they generate in revenue. Do read the entire article on the matter appearing below to derive the opposite conclusion that immigrants' contributions are net positive. As long as I myself have followed this question, the answer has never been otherwise.

We should also always be mindful of the characteristic U.S. Census undercount of undocumented people and Hispanics, generally, that if done well, would bring much-needed federal dollars to our state, as well as stronger political representation which was a direct cost of the last U.S. Census undercount. Accordingly, read Gov. Abbott’s actions cost Texas an extra House seat, by Dudley L. Poston, Jr. & Rogelio Sáenz.

These machinations are nevertheless understandable from the perspective that scapegoating immigrants and stoking anti-Mexican and anti-Latino xenophobic fears in the Republican Party base—to which even a Trump-appointed federal judge didn't completely buy—is preferable to the truth that immigration and immigrants contribute positively to Texas' economy.

-Angela Valenzuela

Does Texas spend more for services to undocumented immigrants than they yield in taxes?

While Texas AG Ken Paxton casts unauthorized immigrants as costly “burden,” experts say they actually generate a net benefit for the state. The last official look – not updated – is 15 years old.

FILE -- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama's transgender bathroom order in 2016. Now Paxton is leading a coalition of seven states suing the federal government to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA. It allows unauthorized immigrants -- Dreamers -- who came to the U.S. as children to legally stay and work here.(2016 File Photo / Austin American-Statesman)

By Robert T. Garrett | Dec 29, 2021 |Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN — As he celebrated an early-round win challenging one of just-inaugurated President Joe Biden’s dozen or more executive orders and policy changes on immigration earlier this year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed to have made a big discovery: “Illegal aliens” are costing state taxpayers a bunch of money.

In his federal lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s initial, 100-day halt to deportations of most noncitizens, “Attorney General Paxton uncovered hundreds of millions of dollars that Texas taxpayers involuntarily spent on illegal aliens every year,” Paxton said in a March 31 news release.

Texans are generous “but the cost of illegal immigration is an unconscionable burden on the taxpayers of our great state,” Paxton said, ticking off six categories of expenses.

Paxton’s depiction of undocumented immigrants as economic deadweights draws fierce disagreement from immigration advocates who brand his analysis artless and one-sided. In court last winter, his numbers were embraced in part – but partly rejected – by a sympathetic federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump.

The episode highlighted how it’s been 15 years since Texas has made an official attempt to analyze how much undocumented immigrants add and subtract from state and local government finances.

In December 2006, one month after her bid as an independent candidate to unseat then-GOP Gov. Rick Perry fizzled, then-Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn issued a special report, “Undocumented Immigrants in Texas: A Financial Analysis of the Impact to the State Budget and Economy.”

It estimated that deporting all 1.4 million unauthorized immigrants that were believed to live in Texas at the time would shrink gross state product by $17.7 billion or 2.1%. Strayhorn found undocumented immigrants produced for the state significantly more revenue than costs, a net positive of $425 million in fiscal 2005. Local governments, socked with incarceration and health care costs not reimbursed by the state, bore a net negative cost of $929 million in fiscal 2005, her report said.

Strayhorn, who as a Republican won two terms as comptroller and before that, one as state railroad commissioner, noted that her findings of positive fiscal effects at the state level conflicted with what at the time were fresh studies by a national anti-immigration group and a left-of-center Colorado think tank, “both of which identified costs exceeding revenue.”

Republican consultant Mark Sanders, who was Strayhorn’s top political adviser, recounted recently that the self-styled “one tough Grandma” and her aides knew the report would stir controversy.

“For a lot of Republican primary voters, it’s a black and white issue, there is no gray: ‘Illegal immigrants, especially illegal Mexicans, are bad for the country,’” Sanders said.

“That was the general feeling and Carole wanted to get out some numbers that showed a different story, a more accurate portrayal of the economic impact that this particular group of people was having on Texas,” he said. Leaders of communities near the Texas-Mexico border “were insistent that we do the report,” to underscore how a total shut-off of illegal immigration would be “devastating” for the state economy, he recalled.

“Now, it would be too hot a potato for someone to pick up and try to update,” said Sanders, noting that immigration more recently has soared in importance and become Texas Republican voters’ top issue. “It would take a tremendous amount of political courage for someone to do that in this atmosphere.”

Former Comptroller Susan Combs, who served in the tax collecting and revenue estimating post for two terms after Strayhorn, said during her tenure that changes in state and federal laws and other constraints on her office prevented the study from getting an update.

The current comptroller, Glenn Hegar, promised in 2013 that if elected he would update the 2006 study or do “a similar one.” However, Hegar hasn’t done so. Through a spokesman, he recently pointed to the press of other business, and a lack of prodding by the Legislature.

“The agency has not been formally asked to study the economic impacts of illegal immigration,” Hegar spokesman Chris Bryan explained.

Hegar, whose family owns a ranch near Eagle Pass on the border, knows “the recent massive increase in illegal border crossings” has ratcheted up border enforcement costs for border communities as well as the state, Bryan said.

“When the health care burdens associated with caring for migrants testing positive for COVID are factored into the increased law enforcement needs, the costs associated with the federal failures on the southern border are no doubt staggering,” he said.

The Hegar spokesman was referring to how Gov. Greg Abbott and members of the GOP-controlled Legislature, with only a sprinkling of Democratic support from border lawmakers, have more than tripled state spending on border security, to $2.8 billion in the current two-year budget cycle.

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Ken Burns: The Sand Creek Massacre: "Confronting America's shameful, violent history makes us stronger as a nation"

With implications for current battles over Critical Race Theory and the teaching of U.S. history in our schools, do listen to this Nov. 23, 2021 interview on Morning Joe of filmmaker, Ken Burns, who comments both on the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and on the meaning of patriotism. This interview takes place in the context of a November 22, 2021 Opinion piece in the Washington Post titled, "Confronting America's shameful, violent history makes us stronger as a nation, that I post after the interview below.

I remember first learning about the Sand Creek Massacre in Dee Brown's classic, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It was required reading in my Race and Ethnic Relations sociology class that I used to teach. I remember feeling particularly impacted by this horrific story despite an entire volume fraught with despicable enmity and terror against Native Americans.

Counter to existing lore, Sand Creek was not at all a battle, but a massacre. In fact, a Burns notes, the National Historic Site designation by the National Park Service—for which U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell fought hard—registers Sand Creek as the only one with the word, "massacre," in its title.

Former U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell fought many years for Sand Creek Massacre to get federally acknowledged on April 28, 2007.

Here is what happened on that horrific day of Tuesday, November 29, 1864.

Around 650 U.S. volunteer soldiers and their leader, Methodist minister and Colonel, John M. Chivington, attacked a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians who were camped along the Sand Creek dry river bed in what is today known as southeastern Colorado. The troops killed 230 people, most of whom where defenseless women, children, and the elderly. This heinous action resulted in a sharp rebuke by Congress' Joint Committee on the Conduct of War as follows:

"As to Colonel Chivington, your committee can hardly find fitting terms to describe his conduct. Wearing the uniform of the United States, which should be the emblem of justice and humanity; holding the important position of commander of a military district, and therefore having the honor of the government to that extent in his keeping, he deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the veriest savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty. Having full knowledge of their friendly character, having himself been instrumental to some extent in placing them in their position of fancied security, he took advantage of their inapprehension and defenceless condition to gratify the worst passions that ever cursed the heart of man. It is thought by some that desire for political preferment prompted him to this cowardly act; that he supposed that by pandering to the inflamed passions of an excited population he could recommend himself to their regard and consideration."

Despite this rebuke, justice was never served, with Chivington and his men getting away with this atrocity. As for Chivington, his term of office expired and he left for the Midwest. He later returned to live in Denver until his passing in 1894.

Ken Burns' point is that "Nobody's diminished by having a complicated past. People are enriched. A great country is in fact greater for acknowledging the things that it has gotten wrong, as well as celebrating the things that it has gotten right." He goes on to say that "curating the facts of our past" is how to not be a good country.

Do listen to his interview with Morning Joe, and read, as well, his timely opinion editorial in the Washington Post that I also post below. As Burns wisely expresses and captures through this corrective reading and exposure of subjugated historical knowledge, how we remember history is also part of the historical record itself.

Let's all of us people of good conscience commit, or re-commit, to greater openness to the truth so that we might not only correct the record but also do our part, individually and collectively, to perfect the nation.

-Angela Valenzuela

In 2007, the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site became the only National Park Service unit to use 'massacre' in its name. Director Ken Burns

Opinion: Ken Burns: Being American means reckoning with our violent history

Ken Burns is a filmmaker whose digital history project UNUM connects scenes from his documentaries to current events.

I’ve been making films about American history for more than 40 years. In all of those years, there’s something central that I’ve learned about being an American: Veneration and shame often go hand-in-hand.

Today, however, I fear patriotism is presented as a false choice. It seems that for many, to be patriotic is to remember and celebrate only our nation’s triumphs. To choose otherwise, to choose to remember our failings, is thus somehow anti-American.

But it is not so simple.

When the National Park Service opened its 391st unit — the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site — the site became the first and only to include the word “massacre” in the title, a reminder of the Nov. 29, 1864, attack on Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people that was misrepresented as a “battle” for nearly a century. In the video above, I reflect on the legacy and contemporary resonance of this massacre.

Being an American means reckoning with a history fraught with violence and injustice. Ignoring that reality in favor of mythology is not only wrong but also dangerous. The dark chapters of American history have just as much to teach us, if not more, than the glorious ones, and often the two are intertwined.

As some question how to teach American history to our children — and even question the history itself — I urge us to confront the hard truth, and to trust our children with it. Because a truly great nation is one that can acknowledge its failures.

Dr. Michael Osterholm is saying that we're going to be overrun by Omicron in about two weeks.

Today's news on Covid and the Omicron give you that sinking feeling. University of of Minnesota Dr. Michael Osterholm is saying that we're going to be overrun by Omicron in about two weeks. He urges everybody to get vaccinated and use high-quality masks.

Note: These are either N95 or KN95 masks. Cloth masks that many of us have been wearing an not sufficient for fighting the virus.

Relatedly, also read Dr. Osterholm's Washington Post piece titled, Opinion: The omicron surge could be the worst public health challenge of our lifetimes.

One medical doctor in New Orleans documents "acute COVID affection" in otherwise healthy children—some 2 years of age and under—such that it's not appropriately characterized as benign.

Children ages 5 and older need to get the vaccine, as well as be surrounded by vaccinated adults. Most children will recover though approximately 1,000 children nationwide have died of COVID.

In Austin, we have just entered Stage Four COVID-19 risk-levels. I know we're all fatigued as this state of uncertainty seems endless, but what else can we do other than to help each other out and stay safe as best we can?

-Angela Valenzuela

Dec. 29, 2021

Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota,

joined Chris Jansing to discuss the rise in coronavirus cases around the country fueled by the omicron variant. He says Covid testing is a "huge issue" and warns "that we're going to see a major overrun of omicron."

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Congrats to Dr. Marnie Curry for her stellar ethnography: “Authentic Cariño: Transformative Schooling for Latinx Youth"

Friends:

I am very excited to have received Dr. Marnie Curry’s just-published book titled, “Authentic Cariño: Transformative Schooling for Latinx Youth (Teachers College Press, 2021)." It arrived just in time for my birthday which is today, December 28th! For ease, I provide the abstract, book features, and reviews below.

Authentic Cariño provides the much-needed counterstory to an otherwise pervasive trend in public education of subtracting resources from our youth as a manifestation of inauthentic, deficit-oriented, superficial caring, or cariño.

University of California Santa Cruz research professor, Marnie Curry, demonstrates, through this rich, ethnographic account of Molina High School (pseudonym) just how possible it is for an entire school serving Latina and Latino youth to be additive, instead of subtractive, caring for students in ways that resonate culturally, enhancing their lives, well-being, and prospects for the future.

Thank you, Dr. Curry, for asking me to write the book's Foreword, honoring my own ethnography of a Houston, Texas high school named Seguin (pseudonym), namely, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring.

My plans for my college classroom is to teach these texts side-by-side and hope others will consider doing so, as well, with the idea of conveying the breadth of policy and practice options, as well as ethical choices, that school officials and practitioners make in the context of teaching our nation's culturally and racially diverse student body.

In this vein, a third book to consider is Drs. Lesley Bartlett and Ofelia García's ethnographic account from a New York school titled, Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times: Bilingual Education and Dominican Immigrant Youth in the Heights (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011). This text provides a much-needed focus on an immigrant community's empowerment.

What these three texts share is that they are also critical institutional ethnographies that examine how schools interface with their respective communities. There may be other such educational ethnographies about which I am unaware. This is what readily came to mind.

Not unlike Subtractive Schooling, Authentic Cariño is translatable to other diverse contexts comprised of youth whose cultures, languages, and community-based identities are not only different, but also deemed as insufficiently worthy as the basis for a relevant and meaningful curriculum or pedagogy that successfully averts, what I term, "subtractive cultural assimilation."

As Curry's ethnography, in particular, suggests, it doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way at all. Quite the opposite, as the contours, dimensions, and manifestations of authentic cariño are vast. Let me count the ways...

Congratulations to Dr. Curry for her meticulous, inspiring ethnography of an outstanding high school that encourages a powerful vision and a path forward for U.S. public education.

-Angela Valenzuela

P.S. I just got this edible arrangement from my daughter at the door! Best birthday ever!

Abstract:

As the population of Latinx students grows in U.S. public schools and our nation seeks to address systemic inequities, racism, and xenophobia, this counternarrative provides inspiration to those wishing to reinvigorate schools and build a more caring and just world. Authentic Cariño documents the innovative practices, successes, and struggles of a full-service community high school serving mostly low-income Latinx youth in an economically depressed California city. Based on 4 years of qualitative research, the author examines how educators, families, and community members established and sustained a social justice school that immersed youth in authentic cariño—a holistic blend of familial, intellectual, and critical care. By nurturing students’ moral, social, personal, and academic development, the school produced college-bound graduates ready to be agents of change in their own lives and in their communities. This case study synthesizes and extends scholarship on color-conscious, healing-centered educational care and offers rich portrayals of praxis that illuminate how schools can equip marginalized youth to thrive. All royalties from this book will support Molina High School and a college scholarship for urban youth.

Book Features:

Advances a fully elaborated model that specifies three fundamental dimensions of care: familial, intellectual, and critical.
Provides an in-depth account of a high school that successfully institutionalized authentic cariño schoolwide.
Advocates for “college and community readiness,” conveying to students how additional schooling would enable them to become community change agents capable of contributing to collective uplift.
Offers insights into the structures, processes, and complications that arise when a school commits to authentic cariño as a path to promote engaged learning and social transformation.
Shows what is possible when educators in partnership with local communities dare to care deeply and widely for Latinx youth.

Reviews:

“Now more than ever, we must infuse authentic cariño into our schools to press forward toward a pluralistic, multiracial democracy where ‘liberty and justice’ prevails for all. For this reason, I genuinely welcome Authentic Cariño: Transformative Schooling for Latinx Youth and hope that readers will be inspired to use it as a resource to advance additive, as opposed to subtractive, schooling.”
—From the Foreword by Angela Valenzuela, professor, University of Texas at Austin

"Not since Jeff Duncan-Andrade's powerful work on critical pedagogy and youth participatory action research have we seen the concept of cariño used to reinvent and revitalize pedagogy for students who have traditionally been marginalized in our schools. Although directed toward Latinx students, this work will benefit all students! Curry has provided us with a masterpiece.”
—Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison and president, National Academy of Education 2018–2021

"We are a society that has experienced massive trauma and deep uncertainty. As we move into a post–COVID-19 world, our schools will need to cultivate deep healing and caring relationships. Marnie Curry’s Authentic Cariño offers us a clear and compelling roadmap about how to respond to collective trauma and create 'networks of care.' Curry’s book offers a fresh lens for us to envision how teachers can build partnerships based in love and care. This book is a must-read for teachers, researchers, and practitioners searching for a fresh and deeply authentic model for transforming schooling. “
—Shawn Ginwright, professor of education and Africana Studies, San Francisco State University

“The kind of engaged, grounded, and community responsive scholarship found in this book is sorely needed in the research community. Through the voices of educators, youth, and community engaged in their own beautiful struggle, Curry illuminates what we can and should be doing in schools to grow, maintain, and protect the wellness of our children and our communities.”
—Jeff Duncan-Andrade, professor, San Francisco State University

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

A Conversation with Austin ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde

Every Texas superintendent needs to listen to this excellent interview of Austin Independent School District Superintendent Dr. Stephanie Elizalde and Evan Smith of the Texas Tribune. She covers all the hard topics with such poise, ranging from the pandemic response, Critical Race Theory, banned books, culturally responsive teaching, attendance-based funding and budgeting, staff and teacher salaries, as well as her own ethnic identity as a Latina and how that matters in relation to student and teacher demographics. I think that we should all appreciate how research guides all her decisions and responses to Evan Smith's questions.

Dr. Elizalde is not only bold and fearless, but direct and eloquent. She is the model of the kind of school leader we need in this crucial time in public education that, as she correctly acknowledges, is under attack by anti-democratic, political forces currently at play in our state and nation.

Thank you, Dr. Elizalde for your intelligent, thoughtful, and courageous leadership, particularly considering this difficult and challenging role as our school district superintendent throughout these many months of the pandemic.

Felices Fiestas! Happy Holidays! You make us proud! 💖

-Angela Valenzuela

Austin ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde joined Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith on Monday, Dec. 13, 2021, to discuss what the COVID-19 pandemic has meant for public education in Austin.

The Texas Tribune’s Batch O’ Politics conversation event series features in-depth discussions with prominent elected officials and newsmakers moderated by journalists from The Texas Tribune. Find upcoming events in this series and more at texastribune.org/events.

This event was presented by the Loewy Law Firm and supported by TEXAS 2036, Raptor Technologies, Texas Association of School Business Officials, Raise Your Hand Texas, Make It Movement, Educate Texas, Philanthropy Advocates, Quest Diagnostics and Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute.

Get the latest on Texas education with our weekly roundup of education news: trib.it/edu-weekly.
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Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Everyone Wants to Be a Hispanic-Serving Institution: The number of HSIs has exploded. But are all those colleges helping their Hispanic Students?

This report documents a crisis in the amount of funding that goes to Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). Biden's Build Back Better Act that is currently on the rocks would provide much-needed funding to HSIs that are experiencing the effects of decades-long neglect, always doing more with less (read the just published, pertinent New Yorker piece titled, "Joe Manchin Kills the Build Back Better Bill.") The Chronicle of Higher Education piece below addresses the scope of the problem:

Within the next few years, one in four nonprofit colleges will meet the enrollment threshold to be a Hispanic-serving institution, which means 25 percent of full-time-equivalent undergraduates are Hispanic. There were 569 colleges that hit that mark in 2019, and 362 more that were close, according to the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, the lobbying group for HSIs. (For-profit colleges are excluded.)

I find it troubling that being an HSI doesn't automatically translate into actual "servingness" of Latina/o students, so many of whom are first-generation students in their families attending college. In fact, institutions receiving these competitively-secured dollars do not necessarily have to spend any money on Latina/o students directly.

Minimally, I hope, as suggested below, that HSIs hire and retain more Latina/o faculty and support Mexican American, Puerto Rican/Boricua, and Dominican Studies departments, institutes, and centers. Summer bridge opportunities are vital, too.

Regardless, every dollar helps our ailing HSI colleges and universities. Important read.

-Angela Valenzuela

Everyone Wants to Be a Hispanic-Serving Institution

The number of HSIs has exploded. But are all those colleges

helping their Hispanic Students?

helping their Hispanic students?

By Sarah Brown

and Katherine Mangan

DECEMBER 1, 2021

The local meatpacking plant is a prime recruiting ground for Marshalltown Community College. Many of its roughly 2,000 students came to the central Iowa community for jobs at the plant, where modest wages, automation, and grueling working conditions are driving them to seek better opportunities through education.

About one in five of its students is Hispanic, putting the college within striking distance of the 25-percent threshold for becoming a Hispanic-serving institution, or HSI — a federal designation that could allow Marshalltown to compete for much-needed grants. If the college had more federal money, it could spend more on recruiting — the JBS plant this year started covering tuition for workers and their dependents, but sign-up has been slow — and on summer boot camps, said José M. Amaya, a professor of English.

But if enrollment trends continue, the chances that Marshalltown will win those funds could drop considerably.

Historically, most HSIs were, like Marshalltown, small community colleges. Now, a growing number of four-year colleges — including large research universities — are joining their rapidly expanding ranks.

Within the next few years, one in four nonprofit colleges will meet the enrollment threshold to be a Hispanic-serving institution, which means 25 percent of full-time-equivalent undergraduates are Hispanic. There were 569 colleges that hit that mark in 2019, and 362 more that were close, according to the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, the lobbying group for HSIs. (For-profit colleges are excluded.)

Gina Ann Garcia, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Pittsburgh, put it this way: “If they’re not an HSI now, they’re gonna be.”

But becoming a Hispanic-serving institution doesn’t specifically require serving Hispanic students, just enrolling them. A growing body of research suggests that the government program designed to support Hispanic education is disbursing too little money among too many colleges, without an assurance that Hispanic students are benefiting. And the competition for scarce grants is likely to get even steeper.

Two-thousand miles away from Marshalltown, the University of California at Berkeley is also pursuing HSI status, propelled by a 42-member task force plotting a roadmap to take the highly selective university from 18 percent Hispanic students to 25 percent by 2027. The move is driven by Berkeley’s desire to reflect the diversity of California’s population, a spokesman said, though “access to additional funding is always a factor for a public university.”

Gina Ann Garcia: “If they’re not an HSI now, they’re gonna be.”

Large research universities like Berkeley have the potential to “sort of plow over the institutions that initially needed the funding,” said Garcia.

Marshalltown doesn’t have a designated grant office, Amaya, the English professor, points out. “It’s hard for us to compete with a research institution,” he said. “To some extent, writing grants is their bread and butter.”

The growth in the number of HSIs reflects the country’s rapid demographic shift. While the nation’s white population is shrinking, the Latino population grew by 23 percent over the past decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. So while some majority-white colleges have sought HSI status intentionally, others have become HSIs by happenstance.

Those colleges aren’t always doing enough to ensure “that all these Latinx students will feel like they have a stake in this institution and feel like they belong,” said Estela Mara Bensimon, a professor of higher education at the University of Southern California and director of the Center for Urban Education.

At a time when nearly one in five Americans identifies as Hispanic, higher education faces a crucial question: What does it mean to be an HSI?

Sunday, December 19, 2021

‘He isn’t going to come back’ — Across Texas, COVID orphans struggle with loss of one or both parents

What could be more sad? The extent of parental deaths due to the pandemic is a staggering number and growing. I quote from this piece herein:

"Theirs is no isolated struggle. More than 140,000 children in the U.S. — including 14,000 in Texas — lost at least one parent or caregiver to COVID-19 during the first 14 months of the pandemic, according to a recent study in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics."

This will be a societal problem far into the future, no doubt, disproportionately impacting children of color. I'm sure there are various places to make a donation to help an orphaned child.

What I readily tracked down was the Child Mind Institute that provides research-based, crisis support to young children.

-Angela Valenzuela

‘He isn’t going to come back’ — Across Texas, COVID orphans struggle with loss of one or both parents

Rebecca Carballo, Megan Rodriguez, Staff writers

Dec. 2, 2021Updated: Dec. 3, 2021 9:15 a.m.

Six-year-old Ayden Villegas looks at pictures of his father, Robert Villegas, who died in January after a three-week battle with COVID-19. Villegas’ widow, Valerie, a hospice nurse, is raising their children — five boys and a daughter — on her own.

Mark Mulligan /Staff photographer

Rozie Salinas’ Christmas tree is covered in dinosaur ornaments, at the request of her 6-year-old grandson.

Decking the halls of her northeast San Antonio home with the colorful figurines is a way for Salinas to make happy memories for Raiden Gonzalez. She adopted the boy after his parents died last year from complications of COVID-19.

Since then, Salinas and Raiden have been through a lot: memorial services for his parents, a move to a new home and two birthdays for Raiden, who was just 4 when his parents died. Along the way, the boy and his grandmother both contracted the coronavirus themselves.

The holidays are especially difficult.

“He was crying, asking how come he can’t have his parents back and that he just wished that they were adults again and not angels,” said Salinas, 48. “It’s just kind of hard to explain to him why he can’t have them back.”

Theirs is no isolated struggle. More than 140,000 children in the U.S. — including 14,000 in Texas — lost at least one parent or caregiver to COVID-19 during the first 14 months of the pandemic, according to a recent study in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The long-term repercussions are expected to be profound. Single-parent households are more likely to slip into poverty and to suffer from unstable housing, low educational attainment and mental health problems. Orphaned children suffer elevated rates of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Pediatrics study described the loss of parents or other family caregivers as one of the “severe unrecognized consequences” of the pandemic.

Valerie Villegas of Portland with the youngest of her six children, Nicholas, 2. Her husband, Robert, 45, died of complications from COVID-19.

Mark Mulligan /Staff photographer

It has affected minority children disproportionately, the study found. Researchers determined that from April 1, 2020, through June 30, 2021, the risk of losing a parent or a grandparent caregiver was 1.1 to 4.5 times higher for children in racial and ethnic minority groups.

In Texas, 58 percent of the children who lost parents were Hispanic and 16 percent were Black, the study found. Hispanics make up 39 percent of the state’s population and Black people 12 percent, according to the 2020 Census.

Some minority groups have larger families, which means the loss of a parent affects more children. But other factors were at work, too.

More than 70 percent of Black and Hispanic men work in front-line jobs in retail, warehousing, meat packing and health care, occupations where the risk of exposure to COVID-19 is greater, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Hispanics are nearly twice as likely to contract COVID-19 as non-Hispanic whites, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.

Rozie Salinas and her six-year-old grandson Raiden Gonzalez, 6, are pictured in the backyard of

their home in San Antonio, Texas, on Dec. 1, 2021. Last year, Raiden lost his parents Mariah and

Adan Gonzalez to COVID-19. Salinas has been caring for Raiden since his parents died and just

formally adopted him at the beginning of this year and they recently moved into a new home

with the help of funds from a GoFundMe that was created when their family’s story received

national attention following the passing of Raiden’s parents.

Josie Norris / San Antonio Express-News

Other epidemics, such as the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s, claimed the lives of many parents. What sets COVID-19 apart is how quickly the disease can progress, leaving families with little time to steel themselves for a devastating loss.

“With COVID, often someone is dead within several days or two weeks,” said Susan D. Hillis, lead author of the Pediatrics study and a senior adviser for the CDC. “And so, suddenly, there’s this shock without adequate time to prepare families.”

‘He isn’t going to come back’

Robert Villegas was cutting his son’s hair in their home near Corpus Christi when he started breathing heavily. His wife, Valerie, a hospice nurse, knew something was wrong. A check of his oxygen level confirmed it: It had fallen dangerously low.

The Villegases headed for Northshore Emergency Center. Unable to go inside because of COVID-19 restrictions, 3-year-old Robert Jr., his haircut still unfinished, said goodbye to his father. It was the last time he saw him.

Valerie and Robert Villegas were just starting to make plans in case one of them died. They never had time to prepare a will. They didn’t have life insurance.

Robert, a truck driver, was 45 when he died. He’d brought in half the family’s income. His death created a huge financial burden on the family, one that widened when Valerie took a three-month, unpaid leave from her job to care for her children.

Unemployment assistance and Social Security survivor benefits kept the family afloat, but money was tight as Valerie tried to keep six children, ages 1 to 18, fed and clothed. Day care for her two youngest cost more than $700 a month.

“My kids never knew what it was to have the lights turned off or the water turned off,” Villegas said. “And they experienced it a good few times this last year.”

In the spring, she returned to work at hospice after being named director of nurses, an administrative role with a higher salary. Now, she’s able to stay on top of the bills, but there isn’t much left over. There won’t be as many Christmas presents under the tree this year, she said.

While the family’s finances have stabilized, the children are still struggling with the loss of their father. Robert Jr., now 4, has angry outbursts, usually when after he hears someone talk about his father.

“He is just starting to realize he isn’t going to come back,” Villegas said.

‘Struggling to be OK’

Tiffany Sanders, 46, of Pearland, lost her husband, Stephen, to COVID a year ago. He was a consultant for oil and gas companies and contracted the virus on a business trip. The family was blindsided. Stephen, 41, had no underlying health conditions and regularly wore a mask.

He was close to their daughters, now 13 and 15. Sanders said her younger teenager is having a particularly hard time.

“It’s been a struggle to get her to a place where she can still keep her dad alive in her heart and honor him by living the best life that she can,” Sanders said. “She’s still struggling to be OK with having any kind of joy in her life.”

Sanders sought counseling for her two teenage daughters, but it took three months to get even a virtual appointment. Her 13-year-old waited nearly 10 months to see a therapist in person.

Stephen Sanders was the sole breadwinner for the family. Tiffany is supporting the family with the payout from her husband’s life insurance policy and Social Security survivor benefits.

She plans to return to work eventually but wonders whether she’s still employable after 15 years as a stay-at-home parent. Before she had children, she worked in international relocations, helping oil and gas companies move employees to operations in other countries.

“I’m going to have to go back to work. My husband left me money, but I’m only 46 years old and it’s not going to last,” Sanders said. “But I’m not trying to think that far ahead. I can barely get through one day.”

‘Too many memories’

Raiden’s father, Adan Gonzalez, 33, died in June 2020 after being hospitalized with COVID-19 for almost a month. He was a truck driver and was in training for a new job.

His wife, Mariah, died four months later at age 29. As Salinas remembers it, her daughter complained she wasn’t feeling well and was taken to the hospital — and by the next day, she was dead.

For a time, Raiden didn’t want to sleep alone. In September, Salinas moved them from a home she’d been leasing to their “forever home” two miles away. Since then, Raiden has been able to sleep by himself.

“That house that we were at, there were just too many memories in there,” said Salinas, who is a customer service representative for a health insurance company.

A GoFundMe helped pay for their new home and for a more reliable car.

Salinas said Raiden sometimes has “little breakdowns” at home and struggles to focus on school the next day. She’s searching for a therapist for him and is seeing one herself.

“It’s OK. Like I tell Raiden, we’re going to get through this one way or the other,” Salinas said. “If we have to struggle a bit, it’s OK. We’re going to get through it. I just want to make sure that he has a good life and has a good childhood. That way, he’s got his memories to be able to go back and talk about.”

Their Christmas tree includes a little memorial to Raiden’s parents. A glittery gold ornament shaped like an M for Mariah and a silver A for Adan hang front and center on the tree. Between them is an ornament with a picture of a smiling Raiden.

rebecca.carballo@chron.com
megan.rodriguez@express-news.net