Immigration crackdown adds challenge for south Phoenix schools

Posted: 02/21/2011
Last Updated: 1 hour and 24 minutes ago
By JOLIE MCCULLOUGH, Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX - Leslie Barnhizer teaches the only kindergarten class for English-speaking students at Balsz Elementary School in southeast Phoenix; the other three are English Language Learning classes.

With enrollment – and consequently, state and federal funding – dropping annually, the district was unable to hire another kindergarten teacher for native English speakers in 2010. So every English-speaking student who moved into the district was added to Barnhizer’s already long roster.

It is not a unique story.

School enrollment numbers have been dropping consistently since 2007 in many Phoenix districts with large Hispanic populations. Superintendents partially blame the economy for this decrease, but they say Arizona’s employer sanctions law in 2007 and SB 1070 in 2010 cracking down on illegal immigrants are also key factors.

But an unintended consequence of the crackdown is that in some school districts, there has been a noticeable impact on the education of children who are native born, English-speaking, U.S. citizens.

“One of the reasons why this class is so big is that the kids have to be separated by language ability, and since we have such a high population of kids learning English, the other three [kindergarten] classes are all ELLâ€