Thread: Lessons to learn

More Spanish-speaking children in area classrooms

By CATHY DYSON
The Free Lance-Star

THE LITTLE GIRLS ACTED like mother hens to their new classmate who didn’t speak much English.

They motioned for him to sit beside them during music, then hovered around the yellow slide with him at recess.

When the youngsters sang about days of the week or the types of weather, the girls made sure their new friend, Christian, could follow along.

He got tripped up once.

While doing the Hokey–Pokey, Christian put his left hand in when he should have used his right, and one of the girls gently corrected him.

“Este mano,” she said, showing him, “this hand.”

Students like these 4-year-olds repeatedly helped each other last year at Farmington Elementary School, according to teachers.

The small school in the Town of Culpeper has the highest percentage of Hispanic students in the Fredericksburg area.

One of every five youngsters at Farmington comes from a Spanish-speaking region, according to the Virginia Department of Education. The percentage is three times higher than the rest of the Fredericksburg region.

The rate reflects the changing landscape in the Culpeper area, about 35 miles west of Fredericksburg.

Culpeper is the 18th-fastest growing county in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Since 2000, its Hispanic population has increased faster than any locality in the region.

But school officials from Northern Virginia to the Shenandoah Valley and places in between are facing rising enrollments of Latinos. In the past five years, the number of students who don’t speak English in Virginia has doubled to more than 72,000.

And education is one of the most expensive services immigrants require, according to a state report.

‘The wave of Hispanics’

The General Assembly directed the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission to study the impact of the growing immigrant population in 2003.

As of last year, there were an estimated 719,000 foreign-born people in Virginia. More than a third of them are here illegally, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.

The study didn’t gauge the statewide cost of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) programs or translation services.

Stafford and Spotsylvania, the counties with the largest number of Hispanic students locally, provide some insight into expenses.

In Stafford, the number of students who aren’t proficient in English doubled in two years. There were 420 students in September 2004—and 861 in June 2006, said ESL coordinator Margaret Rose.

The total is enough to fill a new elementary school. More than two-thirds of the ESL students are Latinos; the rest are Arabic, Asian and European.

Costs of the ESL program are divided among several categories, but probably total about $1 million a year, she said.

Stafford has translated its student code and many of its school publications into Spanish. It’s the only area locality with a list of Spanish speakers who interpret for parents at conferences.

Stafford spends about $100,000 a year for interpreting services, Rose said.

On the other side of the Rappahannock River is Spotsylvania County, which opened a school intake center for immigrants in July.

Families register all their children in one place—with a Spanish-speaking clerk—instead of visiting each facility. Youngsters are tested so schools know in which grade levels and classes they belong, said Sandy Pickett, ESL coordinator.

Spotsylvania used federal funds to cover the new positions at the center. The same type of funding pays for the system’s full-time interpreter.

But last year alone, the county spent $50,000—just to transport Hispanics to 12 schools where ESL students were clustered.

That will change this school year.

Spotsylvania’s foreign-born population has grown enough to have a program in each school. Sixteen teachers will provide instruction in 28 schools.

Both Pickett and Rose have heard various opinions about the Hispanic population. Some people want to know how the community can help; others wonder how much immigrants strain the system.

It costs an average of $9,002 a year to educate each student in Virginia, according to the state’s education department.

“There’s always going to be some group that’s going to burden the system or change the system from what it has been,” said Pickett, who taught Spanish classes for 32 years. “This is the wave of Hispanics.”

‘Years of gaps, academically’

The federal government requires schools to educate whoever shows up at their doors. It doesn’t allow officials to ask about legal status.

“The parents may have come here illegally, but we are still obligated to provide an education for their children,” Rose said.

The government also wants to make sure Hispanics aren’t ignored. Under the No Child Left Behind act passed in 2001, Hispanics and other minorities are evaluated separately.

That means their individual scores have greater impacts.

For instance, say there are 50 Hispanics in a school of 600 students.

Say that 15 of the Hispanics fail standardized tests.

When counted with the school total, the Hispanic results don’t have much of an impact.

Overall, the school gets a grade of 97.5 out of 100.

But when the Hispanics are counted by themselves, the grade drops considerably. With 15 failures among 50 students, the school gets a score of 70.

All students—regardless of their background or English proficiency—are required to pass standardized tests.

“A child could come in the ninth grade and not speak a word of English, and he has to take the same tests, like everybody else,” said Pickett in Spotsylvania.

Some Hispanic students haven’t spent much time in school. Kathleen Rodriguez, the ESL coordinator in Fredericksburg, has noticed an alarming number of older, less-educated students recently.

“There are years of gaps, academically,” she said.

Some of the students come from rural areas in Central or South America where public education isn’t mandatory, she said. Or, they moved often after coming here.

These students may be able to pick up basic conversations. But if they’re not able to read and write their first language, they don’t grasp grammatical concepts, such as subject–verb agreement.

“When kids don’t know the rules of language, they can’t apply those rules to another language,” she said. “It’s very frustrating for all of us.”

That’s why school officials at Farmington want to get the students while they’re young.

‘All children want to learn’

The Culpeper school had a preschool program for the first time last year. If the 4-year-olds represent what’s to come, there are even higher rates of Hispanics in Farmington’s future.

Ten of 18 students in the class spoke Spanish.

There were more Dora the Explorer bookbags labeled with last names like “Delgado” and “Sanchez” than “Brown” and “Dodson.”

The school always has had an eclectic population, Principal Gail Brewer said. Several businesses and banking institutions attract international employees, and Farmington has had children from France and Switzerland, Ghana, Pakistan and Tonga in the South Pacific.

Brewer and Joan Evans, the assistant principal, have been at the school about 30 years. Both stress the same approaches, no matter the population.

“They’re all just kids first, and all children want to learn,” Brewer said. “That’s the catch.”

Test scores reflect their efforts. Almost 90 percent of Farmington students passed standardized tests in 2005, according to the state Department of Education Web site.

Hispanics scored lower in math and science than white and black students. But 89 percent of Spanish-speakers at Farmington passed English tests.

Their scores were the highest of Hispanic students in Culpeper County.

Maybe it’s because vocabulary is reinforced in every class.

On a sunny day in May, second-graders made three- and four-letter words on their hand-held computers, using letters r-e-b-a-g-d.

When first-graders were asked to name places they’d like to live, they listed Cambodia, Mexico and Paris.

Youngsters in the preschool program learned numbers and colors in English and Spanish.

The goal for the preschoolers is total English immersion, said teacher Jennifer Morse. But the students learn from each other, and she figured all could benefit from some bilingual knowledge.

Also, there were times she had to use basic Spanish commands so newcomers—like the little boy named Christian—would understand her.

She and classroom aide Dana Buckhanan weren’t the only ones teaching in the trailer classroom, behind the school. The little mother hens helped as well.

Before newcomers could say they wanted pizza for lunch, the girls spoke for them. They told the others when it was time to wash their hands or to be quiet when they walked through the main hallway.

The girls got certificates at the end of the year for being such good interpreters.

Morse can’t imagine how she would have gotten through the year without them. She used picture cards and did lots of pointing, early on, but there were times when Spanish was the only language new students understood.

“These girls were my saving grace,” Morse said.

To reach CATHY DYSON: 540/374-5425 cdyson@freelancestar.com
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/P...tino/0729_day3

My daughter attends Farmington Elementary in Culpeper. The school used to be considered the best in the area.

10 of 18 in the preschool program don't speak English. There's a real surprise

Fortunately, Steve Jenkins, a local Councilman, is starting the ball rolling on enacting laws similar to Hazleton, PA.

Here's hoping!