Opponents say the law is designed to decrease enrollment by creating a climate of fear—and that appears to be happening in schools across the state.

Hispanic students have started vanishing from Alabama public schools in the wake of a Sept. 28 court ruling that upheld parts of the state’s tough new law cracking down on illegal immigration.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn blocked some parts of the immigration law in her ruling, but she noted federal law doesn’t prohibit the state from requiring schools to check the immigration status of students.

Education officials say scores of immigrant families have withdrawn their children from classes or kept them home, afraid that sending their kids to school would draw attention from authorities.

There are no precise statewide numbers. But several districts with large immigrant enrollments—from small towns to large urban districts—reported a sudden exodus of children of Hispanic parents, some of whom told officials they would leave the state to avoid trouble with the law.

The anxiety has become so intense that the superintendent in one of the state’s largest cities, Huntsville, went on a Spanish-language television show Sept. 29 to try to calm widespread worries.

“In the case of this law, our students do not have anything to fear,” Casey Wardynski said in halting Spanish. He urged families to send students to class and explained that the state is only trying to compile statistics.

Police, he insisted, were not getting involved in schools.

Cullman City Schools Superintendent Jan Harris, a 2010 Tech-Savvy Superintendent Award winner from eSchool News, said she has some concerns about the long-term effects of the ruling but will start training soon to prepare staff for the changes.

“We will have to do additional training to get the procedures implemented,” she told the Cullman Times. “Basically, we’ll have to report their status to state department officials, so that will be the difference for us.”

The worst thing that could come of this ruling, Harris said, is if some children are driven away from the education system by fear of having their immigration status checked.

“It’s not the children’s fault; … the children are innocent in all of this,” she said. “I think society is better served, whatever the circumstances, when we educate children. We don’t want children to be alienated and on the street corners begging for money.”

Although children of illegal immigrants wouldn’t be barred from attending public schools, opponents contend the law is designed to decrease enrollment by creating a climate of fear. And that already appears to be happening in schools across the state.