School employees learn Spanish to better serve their students

MOUNT ULLA — A year ago teachers couldn’t get first-grader Saul Botello to eat lunch or come in from the playground.

Then they found out why: they weren’t pronouncing his name correctly.

“He didn’t realize when teachers were calling him,” said Lorie Hardy, principal at Mount Ulla Elementary School.

Hardy wants to make sure that doesn’t happen again. So this fall a group of about 20 secretaries, counselors and teachers at her school are learning basic Spanish.

Faced with an influx of new students from around the world, other elementary schools in Rowan County have begun to take similar steps.

The number of children enrolled in Rowan-Salisbury Schools who must learn English as a second language has more than doubled in the past four years, from 566 in 1996-1997 to 1,340 this year. That’s more than one in every 20 children in Rowan County.

Surprisingly, the challenge of meeting language needs of these children appears to be hitting rural and city schools equally hard.

At Mt. Ulla Elementary nearly 10 percent must learn English as a second language. At rural Knollwood Elementary, the number is closer to 15 percent — many times more than North Carolina’s 4 percent average.

“We’re working hard to improve services,” said Donna Wilson, who oversees the Rowan-Salisbury Schools’ ESOLprogram, or English for Speakers of Other Languages. “The reality is that the population is going up. It gets to be a challenge determining what pockets of the county they’re coming to.”

Different breeds, equal needs

This year more than 1,000 students with language needs require a specialized teacher.

The explosion of Hispanic, Asian and other populations has required the Rowan-Salisbury school system to hire more staff who are specialized in teaching English to help train those who didn’t grow up with the language. The challenge has pinched teachers who were never trained to teach English as a second language. But it’s also strained the county’s few ESOL teachers, who find themselves overwhelmed with more and more students.

The school system’s ESOL program had only four teachers in the 1996-1997 school year. The school system now has 21 full-time and three part-time ESOL teachers on its 30 campuses. Such hirings have helped lower the teacher-to-student ratio in ESOL classes — though they still vary widely from school to school, Wilson said.

Last year the school system hired Frances Stapleton to direct a new parent resource center in Salisbury that allows parents and students to study and practice English together. Stapleton also visits homes of immigrant families around Rowan County.

School employees and law enforcement officers also invited ESOL students and their parents to a forum at Knollwood Elementary. They hope to visit other schools this year.

From classrooms to closets

But Rowan County’s public schools may have to do still more to accommodate children of immigrating families. Three years after the district fell under the scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Education, the federal government is still asking questions.

Federal inspectors began inquiring about the school system’s ESOLprogram in 1997-1998. In a letter to local administrators last month, the federal government asked for more information about how children learning English as a second language here perform. Officials also wants to know why most ESOLstudents don’t participate in courses for the academically gifted.

“Federal legislation dictates you can’t discriminate by preventing them from participating in programs with other kids. That’s essentially segregation,” said Jerry Tucsain, a consultant on the subject for the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, which oversees the state’s 117 school systems.

Local schools also may have to move more classes for students with limited English skills into permanent buildings. At many schools, such classes are commonly held in mobile classroom buildings.

Now the U.S. Department of Education wants a breakdown of where local schools are teaching ESOL students.

Schools have had to use more and more mobile classrooms on their campuses to accommodating growing enrollments. The system now depends on 102 mobile classrooms — more than twice the number it had five years ago. It will need at least six more next year for the system’s 30 campuses, said Gene Miller, assistant superintendent of building and operations.

Mobile classrooms aren’t the only issue. Some schools use storage rooms, auditorium stages and space beneath stairwells to run ESOL and other programs that need smaller class sizes.

Wilson says the school system isn’t discriminating as long as all student populations are overcrowded.

“If other classes have to use closets, then we’re not going to complain about being in a closet,” Wilson said. “...The administration is studying the equity of space.”

Tucsain said Rowan-Salisbury isn’t the only school system dealing with space issues.

“We’ve been dealing with this issue for 1,000 years. And the same questions keep coming up over and over in a lot of places where there are insufficient facilities.”

The law of the land

As costly as providing space and teachers may be, school systems have little choice in whether to meet the needs of students with a limited command of English.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that all children — whether in the United States legally or not — must have equal access to education in public schools. That decision involved a Texas statute that allowed schools to bar children of undocumented people or charge them tuition.

The court struck that law down 5-4, arguing that it forced a “lifetime of hardship” and a “stigma of illiteracy” on undocumented children.

Locally — to determine if they should enter the ESOLprogram — students are first ranked 1-6 on a verbal test. School districts typically pull ESOL students from regular classrooms for 30 minutes to an hour each day for intensive English studies.

The older the student and the less fluently they speak English, the more training they receive.

Tery J. Medina of the Miami-based Southeastern Equity Center works with school systems throughout the South to help them serve children learning English as a second language.

“School systems are mandated to do this,” Medina said. “It’s not an option. Exactly how they do it is pretty much left up to the local school systems.”

Many are children of migrant workers who came for jobs at local mills and farms. Though about two-thirds are native Spanish speakers, these children speak more than 40 native tongues.

Fifth-grader Eric So, whose family is from South Korea, has participated in ESOLclasses in each of his grades at Knollwood Elementary.

Eric says he feels a lot more comfortable raising his hand when his teachers ask questions than he did four years ago. “In first grade I came to class and I didn’t understand some of the words they were saying,” he said. “They talked so fast.”

Teaching parents, too

Hardy, the principal at Mt.Ulla, said that offering a course in basic Spanish wasn’t meant to prevent children from learning English, but to help them grow comfortable in a foreign setting. Only then can they begin to grasp other subjects comfortably in their new language.

“Our goal is to get them feeling comfortable first,” Hardy said. “We need to get them to where they feel welcome when they come in the building.”

In many cases children must face learning English without help from their parents. And parents will only become more involved in schools and their children’s education when they can speak English, Hardy said.

The new parent resource center is one step Rowan-Salisbury Schools have taken to help parents learn how to help their children in their studies. Parents can access computer software and borrow materials from the center much like at a library.

“We encourage parents to take advantage of the many opportunities in the community to learn English,” said Mary Ann McCubbin, who serves English-learning students at Overton, Morgan, Cleveland and Isenberg elementary schools. “The child sometimes has the responsibility of being the translator for the family, and that places the child in a semi-adult role that is sometimes a greater responsibility than the child should bear.”

Regardless of whether they speak English, parents who move here from other parts of the world care just as much about their children, McCubbin said.

“These are very concerned and caring parents and they’re going to be there for their children. Many of them realize that education is their child’s key to a better life. In many cases, that’s why they came here.”

Contact Brad A. Hodges at 704-797-4266 or bhodges@salisburypost.com .