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  1. #1
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    Collinsville K-12 expects Hispanic student majority

    Dear ICE, I think you need to pay a visit to Cagle's poultry processing plant in Collinsville!



    http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/i ... xml&coll=2

    Collinsville K-12 expects Hispanic student majority
    Administrators say surge in lower grades may be historic first
    Wednesday, July 04, 2007
    TOM GORDON
    News staff writer

    COLLINSVILLE - Schools teach history every day.

    When classes resume Aug. 9, however, Collinsville High School may be making history - the first school in Alabama to have a Hispanic majority.

    "We're probably in a unique situation," said school principal Donny Jones.

    Hispanics have been the largest group at the K-12 school for several years now. During the recently ended school year, they made up more than 47 percent of the students enrolled. Whites constituted 34 percent of the total, and were the largest group in only three of the school's 12 grades, and blacks were 9 percent of the enrollment.

    Kathy Roebuck, administrative assistant to DeKalb County School Superintendent Charles Warren, said Hispanics are making up the overwhelming number of early enrollments for the coming year's kindergarten classes. More will register before the start of the school year and those incoming numbers, along with the departure of white graduates, should push Collinsville's Hispanic percentage well past 50 percent.

    "As the years progress, you're going to see it go from mostly white to almost all Hispanic because the numbers are coming in from the lower grades," Roebuck said. "You're seeing the number of Hispanics going up, up, up and the number of whites going down, down, down."

    Collinsville, which lies in southern DeKalb County, has had a substantial Hispanic presence for some time. Drawn by job opportunities at a local nursing home and at Cagle's poultry processing plant, Hispanics make up nearly a quarter of the town's more than 1,600 residents, and Hispanic businesses are fixtures on Main Street.

    Fewer than 10 Hispanic students were at the school 17 years ago, but "they're just like the normal population now," Jones said. "With our diverse population, a child's just a child to us. We just work with all of them."

    Hispanic kids are part of the student government, are mainstays on the soccer team, play football and basketball and are on cheerleading squads. They aren't graduating in great numbers, because many are leaving school as soon as they reach the age when they can go to work.

    "It's getting better," Jones said. "They're starting to stay and graduate."

    Collinsville High had a graduating class of 41 in May, and about a fourth of the diploma recipients were Hispanic.

    Hispanics also are filling the rolls of the school's English language learning classes, and they were a majority of the students in some just-ended monthlong reading classes taught by second-grade teacher Lydia Gray and third-grade teacher Patsy Chambers.

    Last year was the first at Collinsville for Gray, who had a class that was about half Hispanic. This year, Gray expects about 18 students in her second-grade class and three-quarters of them will be Hispanic.

    "I didn't know what a challenge it would be to work with Hispanic students," Gray said. "But I love it, and I will always work in this kind of environment."

    In Chambers' majority-Hispanic summer class, a main focus for the students was reading about the ancient Egyptians. Another of Chambers' goals was to improve their ability to understand what they read.

    A majority of the students were reading at or above grade level when the class ended last week, and Chambers was using a short story called "The Flea Market" and a timer to measure how many words they could read in a minute, and how much they could tell her in a minute about what they had just read.

    One of them finished about a third of the narrative, sometimes substituting similar sounding words for the correct ones - "neighborhood" instead of "neighbor" and "put" instead of "but" - along the way.

    When it came time to recount what he had read, the youth sat with his hands in his lap and said little, despite smiles and words of encouragement from Chambers.

    "Lord help us," Chambers said after her timer sounded. "Did you just not like the story or what? You were just trying to get finished, that's what you were doing."

    Earlier, when students sat around a horseshoe-shaped desk to hear Chambers read about King Tut and to answer her questions about him and ancient Egyptian history, Luis Diaz said "Cool" and gave a thumbs-up when Chambers explained what she wanted them to write about it.

    Collinsville is the only school that Luis, 9, has ever known.

    "I have a lot of friends, and we do so much stuff in here, and it's fun," he said. "We have good teachers, and the teachers are very good with us. We always play with the teachers and our friends."

    Luis' Alabama-born classmate for the summer session, Faith Bishop, echoed his remarks and added some of her own: "I would never want to change schools. Never, ever, ever, ever."

    Asked why, she said, "I just like it here. It's just because I've been here all along, and I've gotten used to it. If I go to another school, I'll never get used to it, and I know none of my friends will be there."

    Some of those friends have names like Rosalia and Victoria and illustrate the diversity that teachers like Chambers say is one of Collinsville's strengths.

    "They learn so much from each other, and they learn to accept different cultures at a young age, and that's important," Chambers said.

    E-mail: tgordon@bhamnews.com
    Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God

  2. #2
    Senior Member Beckyal's Avatar
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    Many illegals breed like rabbits so that they can yell about families being separated and so that they can get more benefits. Cut off the benefits and anchor baby status and see how fewer children there will be.

  3. #3
    saveourcountry's Avatar
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    Unfortunately, many educators are assisting with this invasion.

    As an educator, I have seen it first hand.

    Where is the uproar? You would be shocked to see the money that goes into ESOL programs, free breakfast and lunch, books, materials, and on and on and on.....

    All on YOUR dime.

  4. #4
    Senior Member pjr40's Avatar
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    "We're probably in a unique situation," said school principal Donny Jones.
    DUH!!!!! Unique, like in up the creek and the water is turning brown?

    Appears Donny Jones has been sipping the PC Kool-Aid.
    <div>Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of congress; but I repeat myself. Mark Twain</div>

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