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Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

No.

Based on the latest count, as of September 2023, enrollment in the Whitewater Unified School District included 181 “newcomers” over the previous three years.

The district includes the city of Whitewater, about 50 miles southwest of Milwaukee, which has a population of about 15,000.

Newcomers are “multilingual learners” who are new to the United States — generally less than two years.

There were 83 newcomers in the 2021-22 school year, 84 in 2022-23 and 14 so far in 2023-24.

The newcomers are a subset of the district’s 415 “multilingual learners” — those who speak, or are exposed to in the home, at least one language besides English.

Multilingual students include some who were born in the U.S. In Whitewater they speak eight languages besides English, including Spanish, Mandarin and Hindi.

The Whitewater Police Department on Dec. 28, 2023, wrote to President Joe Biden asking for more resources because of increases in immigrants.

This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

Google Docs: Whitewater superintendent email Jan. 5, 2024

Channel 3000: Whitewater officials set the record straight on immigration influx

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Tom Kertscher joined Wisconsin Watch as a full-time Milwaukee-based reporter in October 2024 after starting as a freelance Fact Briefs reporter in January 2023. In addition to contributing to Wisconsin Watch’s collaboration with The Gigafact Project to combat online misinformation, he reports on Wisconsin policy, labor, energy and the rapid expansion of data centers across the state. Kertscher is a former longtime reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a contributing writer for Milwaukee Magazine and the author of two sports books, on Al McGuire and Brett Favre.