Sacramento County’s San Juan Unified School District has what could be the largest number of U.S. students who are still in Afghanistan after the U.S. pulled out their military forces during the transition to Taliban rule.
According to SJUSD Deputy Superintendent Melissa Bassanelli, about 27 students are still unaccounted for. Including their family members, it’s estimated that 72 Sacramento County residents are still attempting to return home.
Bassanelli said while the trips are of a personal nature, the district is trying to do what it can to help secure their return.
CapRadio’s afternoon anchor Randol White spoke with Bassanelli about the school district’s struggle with getting in touch with these students in the Taliban-held country.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length
Interview Highlights
On how the district is communicating with the families
So there’s been different kinds of communication. It’s very challenging in terms of communicating abroad. There are families that are fractured right now, so part of the family is still here in the Sacramento area and the other part of the family is in Afghanistan.
We have been communicating with the portions of families who are here to also communicate abroad to our families who are out there.
On the school district’s attempt to reach out to congressmembers to help
What we've been doing is we've been collecting all the personal information, and so we've been providing that information that they're then forwarding to the Department of State as well as the Department of Defense and where it goes from there, we're not looped in on that piece.
At times, we're able to make contact with the families that are abroad in Afghanistan who are also asking, where are we in progress? We're also doing outreach into our community to assess what needs exist, particularly for those fractured families, so that if they need assistance related to food or other kinds of supplies or rent, we're able to help connect them with resources that can support them while their family members are abroad.
On if there have been signs of hope
Well, we always have to hang on to hope. I will say I've been encouraged just over the weekend in terms of outreach from the community and trying to do what they can to help facilitate their return home. So what's hard is as we wait and see and we have ... we have some communication with families who are in Afghanistan, we have little snippets of hope when we do believe that they may have been contacted. But it's just hard to say what's happening right now because there's a lot of confusion happening in Afghanistan. We're not going to stop advocating. And I think that advocacy also instills some hope.
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