WBAL.com

Frederick County Commissioner Lennie Thompson has proposed that next year’s county school system funding be based on a good-faith effort by the school board to count the number of students with questionable immigration status.

He says the count would not identify a student by name.

Thompson says the idea is to gather information to determine how many students whose legal status in the country isn’t reasonably documented.

School board president Daryl Boffman is opposed to the idea.

He says withholding funds for the schools based on the count would punish every student, not just those in the U.S. illegally.

Boffman also worries the head count could cause illegal immigrants to remove their children from school.