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Pushing for translations


BY ELLEN YAN
STAFF WRITER

September 2, 2005

The language patrol is here.

Several advocacy groups for immigrants and children will be testing the Department of Education all year on its promise of new translation services for key meetings and documents, including phone help in 150 languages. They will go to public meetings and even send parents into schools to ask for translations in their native languages, especially the top eight foreign languages spoken by its 1.1 million students.

"We see ourselves in many ways as helpers to the school system," said Jose Davila, director of education advocacy at The New York Immigration Coalition. "It's a big school system and so we want to make sure if there are holes in the system, we alert Department of Education officials."

They began this week by going to schools and high school enrollment centers, where one monitor, Deycy Avitia from the coalition, found spotty adherence.

In one example, she noticed "restroom" and other signs were in eight languages, but the welcome sign, with its list of required documents, was in English only. After being alerted, one supervisor at the Long Island City site taped up the list in other languages.

Monitors also said they found some enrollment centers making do with children translating for parents and having security guards checking for required school documents, a sensitive situation for some who may be illegal immigrants.

DOE spokeswoman Kelly Devers said the department is trying to get ahead in filling needs, including having key documents in the top eight languages, which include Urdu, Chinese, Haitian-Creole and Spanish. Sixteen translators have been hired and five companies with translators on call have been awarded contracts.

"Our goal is to have staff thinking proactively about providing services," Devers said.

This comes as a bill requiring translation services winds its way through the City Council after years of public complaints that key school documents and meetings are useless to people who don't speak English well.

The DOE is already doing a lot of what the bill would require, but its supporters said writing the services into law would keep future chancellors from ignoring translation issues.

There's been growing concern among children's advocates about the academics of students for whom English isn't their first language and how great a role these students' parents can play in their education.

"We want to make sure parents and their children are getting their fair share, that they're getting the services they rightfully deserve," said Elsie St. Louis Accilien, executive director of the Queens-based Haitian Americans United for Progress, which had monitors at schools this week.