# Of Non-English Speaking Students Highest In Shelby Co. ALA

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs ... /505280768

Number of non-English speaking students in Alabama highest in Shelby Co.

The Associated Press
May 28, 2005

More students are enrolled in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes in Shelby County than in any other school district across the state, Shelby County officials said.

Leah Dobbs Black, ESL program area specialist for Shelby County schools, said the district realized its first-ranked distinction after applying for federal funds to help its ESL program. But officials said they weren't surprised. The county's ESL program has more than tripled in size in the past five years, growing from 391 students to 1,209, Black said.

"When you're in a high-growth area, you grow exponentially," Shelby School Superintendent Evan Major said. "We have a large Hispanic population because Shelby County is a good place to find work."

Spanish speakers comprise 80 percent of the ESL students, and the remaining 20 percent speak 45 languages among them, officials said.

And school authorities said they were working hard to cater to those ESL students, paying more than $1.4 million a year for ESL teachers and staff.

While many school systems use federal money to hire ESL teachers, Shelby officials said the county Board of Education funds their salaries. That leaves the school system free to use Title III money for other purposes, such as after-school and summer-school ESL programs, said Carol Plott, ESL program supervisor.

"The school system received $120,416 this year in Title III money allocated for the ESL program," Plott said. "We have 32 ESL teachers, 12 bilingual aides and some teachers on contract. And when you figure that each master-level teacher makes a starting salary of $35,000 a year, that would only be three teachers we could hire through Title III funds."

Teachers said they've seen the benefit of Shelby County's concerted efforts.

"I have students who couldn't speak any English or write English at the beginning of the year that are speaking and writing sentences now," said Jan Renfro, kindergarten ESL teacher at Valley Elementary School.

The DeKalb and Mobile county school systems were the only ones in Alabama that came close to Shelby's ESL numbers this year. They had 1,076 and 1,041 ESL students, respectively, according to a report from the state Department of Education. Farther down the list, Jefferson County had 656, Hoover 611 and Birmingham 468.

Yeah, I read that! It made my blood boil!

Did you notice how all warm and fuzzy and wonderful they made it sound? I sure as H _ _ _ hope some of these couch potatoes noticed the price tag that the tax payers are having to foot! They are more interested in watching American Idol! Talk about living in a fantasy world down here!


Geeze, Wake Up Alabama! The media here is just as bad as everywhere else. All they report is about the "poor "immigrants" this and that! It makes me want to throw up!

Well maybe they need to be woken up in the middle of the night with cars driving through blasting hispanic music at all hours! Or drive through and watch all of them sitting outside getting plastered and passing out in neighbors yards! Not to mention the trash that is being thrown everywhere and your childs bicycle getting stolen by their kids!

I'm going to bed before I bust a blood vessel! Sleep tight everyone!

Yeppo. All funding for illegal alien programs, e.g., ESL, needs to be terminated. We're all fed up with the enormous financial drain. It's time these scofflaws grow up and pay their own expenses. Thirty years ago, I volunteered to teach high school algebra to struggling juniors and seniors in a school largely populated by Latinos. It was a great experience for them and for me and it cost nothing. My company permitted me to take the early hour off as a charity three times per week. I met with them before their first class. And it didn't actually cost the company anything because like the rest of you, I put in far more than 40 hours because I did the job rather than use up time. Why do we have to have expensive programs to do essentially the same thing? I'm sure volunteers could be found to teach remedial English to legal ESL students and we wouldn't need the "professional" services of Leah Dobbs Black. See, we just saved the state $120,416. IMO, if no one will volunteer to do it as a charity, it must not be worth much. In this case, at least 80% of the taxpaying public believes this program should be terminated.

This is just really getting to me. I contacted my representatives probably 6 weeks ago requesting a breakdown of how much of NC taxpayer dollars were being spent on illegal immigrants in North Carolina. After a couple of weeks, I finally received a ridiculously low estimate of what was being spent on Medicaid for these people. The other questions such as education, intrepreters, prison costs, signs posted in Spanish everywhere you go, documents available in Spanish and English up to and including ballots--those requests were totally ignored. I wrote back and told them that they left out a huge portion of MY money that is being spent to accomodate these illegals and have not heard ONE WORD back from them.

I think we ALL need to contact our representatives and demand this information. Surely, they won't continue to ignore these requests if enough people demand answers to how they are spending our money. I realize that it is an impossible request since they refuse to even ASK if any of these people are in our state legally but SURELY they have SOME idea of how much money is being spent. I have sure threatened all of my representatives that, if they don't start fighting to stop this travesty, not only will they not get my votes, I will actively seek to have them defeated in the next election.