{"id":357148,"date":"2026-09-25T22:54:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T22:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/357148\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T22:54:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T22:54:16","slug":"education-attorney-diana-aragundi-is-making-new-york-citys-schools-better-for-immigrant-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/357148\/","title":{"rendered":"Education attorney Diana Aragundi is making New York City\u2019s schools better for immigrant children"},"content":{"rendered":"

Education and children\u2019s advocacy attorney Diana Aragundi<\/a> loved school as a kid. As the eldest daughter to immigrant parents, she was also the first in her immediate family to navigate the city\u2019s education system.<\/p>\n

Today, she\u2019s using her law degree<\/a> to make the schools she and her siblings grew up in work better for the immigrant children in them today.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the city, and I\u2019m happy to do my part to continue making it better for other families,\u201d Aragundi said of her work. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine living anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

An attorney and assistant project director of the Immigrant Students\u2019 Rights Project at advocacy firm Advocates for Children, Aragundi provides legal counsel to immigrant families who need help accessing education that will actually work for their children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That involves a wide range of legal services, she said, including suing the Department of Education for disability accommodations or special education support, helping new students enroll in school, assisting students in transferring to a different school for a program that would better fit them or to escape an unsafe bullying situation, and pushing for bilingual education, translation services, or other English Language Learning help.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur school systems in New York City look so different from other states and from other countries,\u201d Aragundi said. \u201cWhen we talk about educational support, it can be anything really under the sun. The work is letting them know that they\u2019re welcome and how they can navigate those processes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aragundi also takes part in active outreach to immigrant families to inform them of their rights \u2013 and letting them know they can access free services and representation from her and her team if they fall under the group\u2019s income cap and have a child under 22 seeking an education, or considering college, in the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, a lot of parents don\u2019t know that they have a right to request a change if their child is learning English if they\u2019re not seeing progress or they\u2019re worried that their child could benefit from a bilingual program,\u201d Aragundi said of why their outreach is important. \u201cIf there\u2019s a seat available in their neighborhood in their district, they have a right to request it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Aragundi at an outreach event.<\/p>\n

She knows firsthand how challenging navigating the city\u2019s school system can be for parents at first from watching her mother and father find themselves faced with supporting her and her two younger brothers through the education system as they each experienced attending their local Long Island City public school in different ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all had very different educational experiences in the same school,\u201d Aragundi said. \u201cSchool made sense to me. It was rules I could follow and I could understand. But, my middle brother was a class clown, and my youngest one has a learning disability, so we all had different relationships with school and different impressions of school. My parents didn\u2019t know how to navigate it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diana Aragundi works to help resolve more than student issues<\/p>\n

Aragundi\u2019s focus expands beyond resolving individual issues students have in school. She also helps create large-scale policy change in the city\u2019s schools, both at Advocates for Children and as the chair of the New York City Bar\u2019s Education and the Law Committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, she said Advocates for Children has helped ensure schools are clear on the law, which holds that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers should not be entering without the proper warrant, and that students and parents are aware of their rights if ICE does come to their classrooms.<\/p>\n

The organization has also helped push for translation and interpretation support, both in classrooms, for parents at parent-teacher conferences and for documents, as well as increased bilingual special education services.<\/p>\n

The focus of the policy change work Aragundi does is informed by her direct, daily work for families, she said.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m talking to parents every day. I\u2019m texting them. They\u2019re sending me WhatsApp messages,\u201d Aragundi said. \u201cI\u2019m directly connected to parents who are experiencing issues, and then I bring that to our policy director, and say, \u2018We\u2019re seeing this. If other folks in the office are seeing it too, is this something that we should bring to the attention of the Department of Education?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Aragundi gives a talk.<\/p>\n

At the city bar, Aragundi pushes forward efforts to help educate other attorneys on education law issues so they can properly advocate for children\u2019s education when they have a case that ends up dealing with the issue and to create more opportunities for all attorneys to learn from each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no idea about a lot of the education-related issues before working in education law,\u201d Aragundi said. \u201cI think oftentimes we work in these silos, but just think about how much more effective our representation can be when we are participating in community with others.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As chair, she is continuing to host more panels, programs, and continuing legal education seminars on education issues to help improve the state of the field.<\/p>\n

Aragundi is also helping to start more conversations around chronic absenteeism and how to address it at the City Bar, including supporting efforts on a landmark suit that settled earlier this year and increases the Department of Education\u2019s obligations to support students experiencing it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just this work at Advocates for Children and the City Bar that\u2019s informed by her personal experience.\n<\/p>\n

Aragundi said her legal work has been inspired by her and her family\u2019s lives from the start. Though law school felt like a natural next step for a New York University graduate with English and Political Science degrees, what truly pushed her to begin a career in the legal field was seeing a family member find themselves tied up in the court system and feeling frustrated that she didn\u2019t know how to help.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember just feeling really disempowered and not really understanding,\u201d Aragundi said about the aftermath of her family member\u2019s arrest. \u201cI would read what the charge was, but I didn\u2019t understand how to navigate those systems. Coming from an immigrant household, and my parents having limited English skills and not being able to advocate, I just felt very frustrated by the lack of resources and the lack of understanding in my community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew that I didn\u2019t want to feel that again,\u201d Aragundi said of the experience, which came while she was working at her uncle\u2019s taxi company after college. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to feel disempowered again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She enrolled in the City University of New York\u2019s public interest law program. Three years later, she took her degree back to her community, beginning her career by representing taxi workers at the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The work \u2013 which was part of a new program providing free legal representation to drivers caught up in administrative, traffic, or criminal proceedings related to their work driving a yellow cab \u2013 was a natural transition, Aragundi said, from working through taxi medallion issues and crash reports with drivers in her uncle\u2019s Astoria, Queens, garage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really was an opportunity to give them a voice and not have to spend a lot of money trying to defend these tickets,\u201d Aragundi said. \u201cTheir license is their livelihood, and so we were trying to keep them employed and keep them from losing that license. It was, I think, really important to be able to provide them that support.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Aragundi says that outside of work, she has a love of travel.Photo provided by Diana Aragundi<\/p>\n

Though she enjoyed the work and the connection to her family, Aragundi said she knew she was interested in eventually doing different types of legal work. She left that position after just about a year and spent three years at the Children\u2019s Law Center, a youth-centered advocacy firm, but with a different mission than her current role: Vocalizing the rights and interests of children caught in the middle of divorce and custody proceedings to the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The work, though stressful and frustrating at times, helped Aragundi become comfortable developing easy rapport with kids, something that helps her successfully advocate for children in the education context now, she said, adding that older children will text her directly about their cases and what they need.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI love talking to kids, and I loved trying to find resolutions for families,\u201d Aragundi said. \u201cBut, in divorce proceedings, there are larger systemic issues with how long it takes families to get relief that they need through the court system, and as the attorney for the child, you\u2019re not really driving the case. The case is between the parents, so the child\u2019s voice is not the determining factor, which means that sometimes what I thought the child needed or what the child wanted really wasn\u2019t moving the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

That experience of working through varied, competing interests to create the best outcome for a child has helped her hone how she advocates for kids through the school system now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s having these hard conversations,\u201d Aragundi added. \u201cIt\u2019s reminding everyone we\u2019re here on behalf of the child. It\u2019s not adversarial in the same way that it is with Family Court, where sometimes people feel like you\u2019re picking a side. Here we should all be on the same side. We should be on the side of the child. When you can frame it that way, it helps build that sense of community and answer, \u2018How can we work within the school system?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Education and children\u2019s advocacy attorney Diana Aragundi loved school as a kid. As the eldest daughter to immigrant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8435,67,2710,9,56,63,65,64,10780],"class_list":["post-357148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-advocates-for-children","tag-education","tag-law","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}