Immigrant coalition pushes changes in city school district
Posted by The Times of Trenton September 02, 2007 6:40PM
Categories: Education

http://blog.nj.com/timesupdates/2007/09 ... s_cha.html


TRENTON -- A coalition concerned with the needs of Hispanic and immigrant students has several recommendations it wants the city school district to consider.

The CHANGE Coalition is making new recommendations, as well as updating older ones, to the superintendent.

The recommendations were made by the coalition's Hispanic and Immigrant Student Needs Committee, or Committee 5 as it is also called.

Committee Chairman Juan Martinez said all the committees within the coalition are either updating or adding to their suggestions to the district.

Martinez said that as a result of a recent state audit report that found a number of bilingual and bicultural teachers in the district were not certified, the committee is asking for the district to expedite the endorsement of certifications for these teachers.

It is also recommending that multicultural heritage be promoted across the curriculum, he said.

Existing recommendations include the creation of a community relations director with policy-making authority; hiring a community parent liaison coordinator to start by Nov. 7; prioritizing the hiring of bilingual candidates across all employment levels and hire a recruiter to achieve that; and shift funding from Trenton Central High School to the Smith Center to strengthen English as a Second Language services at the annex.

See Monday's Times for more on this story.

Contributed by Eva Loayza