Buncombe County Schools sees dip in immigration, rethinks ESL spending

Buncombe County Schools is getting less money to fund a program some say is already a grossly neglected program: English as a second language.

During a specially convened meeting of the Buncombe County’s Education Committee on June 30, Ginny Barrett, BCS federal programs director, presented how much the county would receive in certain federal grants for the 2021-22 school year.

Barrett’s presentation showed a decrease in grant funding in the Title III and Title I – ESL programs and the Migrant Education Program. The reason for the decline, according to Barrett’s memo, was the decreased immigrant and migrant population in BCS.

“We didn’t see much over the course of the school year, either moving in or out,” Barrett told the Citizen Times, adding that the decline in immigration was likely due to the pandemic.

BCS received $ 5,161 less federal funding for its immigrant education program. Barrett said the decline is not a concern as the district has funds from last year that can cover the deficit. According to their presentation and the same presentation in June 2020 for the coming school year, BCS has looked after 150 students with a migration background annually in the years 2019-20 and 2020-21.

The US Department of Homeland Security defines a migrant as an individual who leaves their home country to seek residency in another country, but does not always have permanent American residence.

BCS uses funds from the Migrant Education Program to pay the salaries and benefits of summer school staff, outreach specialists, coordinators and mentors, Barrett’s presentation showed.

While the funds from the transferred funds are sufficient to cover a cut in federal funds for students with a migrant background, funds left over from previous years will not be used to compensate for the lower funds for the ESL programs.

Overall, the district receives $ 17,377 less in federal ESL grants. That money helps pay for teaching materials, professional development, and ESL staff, according to Barrett’s presentation.

Instead, Barrett said the district will use emergency funds for elementary and secondary schools to meet needs and grow the district’s ESL program.

“The federal ESSER grant filled my void,” said Barrett.

The Emergency Fund, a $ 13.2 billion federal grant designed to support schools during and after the pandemic, is a federal program run by the states. Buncombe County Schools will receive approximately $ 10.2 million in aid over the next three years.

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According to a presentation to the school board on May 6, part of the funds will be used to hire 86 employees to help with learning and other educational violations due to the pandemic.

Future new hires include a dual language coach, an interpreter for language services, and ESL teachers and assistants – how many were not specified.

But some ESL teachers say it’s still not enough.

“We get maybe $ 75 a year on material, and I spend a lot more than that per month,” said BCS ESL teacher Gabriela Dominguez Aragonez. “I feel like if we had more support and more resources, we could do a lot more, but we do what we can with what we have.”

Dominguez Aragonez is entering her fifth year as an ESL teacher at Emma Elementary School. Prior to BCS, she was an ESL teacher at Asheville City Schools. She has also taught in Chicago, Texas, Mexico, and Germany.

She said that her experience with ESL has led her to believe that it is an integral part of student and community success.

“Think about this population and what it would mean for our system for children to be successful and for our bilingual population to become more integrated into society,” she said.

Emma Elementary has a higher Hispanic population – about 48% according to the U.S. Department of Education – than the majority of the district, which has about 17% Hispanic residents.

But it’s not just Hispanic children who take ESL courses. Dominguez Aragonez said she has students who speak Russian or Ukrainian as their first language.

In 2020-21, BCS had 1,875 ESL students across the district, according to the NC Department of Public Instruction. In 2019-20 there were 1,986.

While the decline in ESL students was just over 100 children from 2019-20 to 2020-21, Barrett sometimes said that is all the state needs to take on the funding.

“That’s probably about the number that (funding) would generate,” she said. “Everything upside down.”

A large portion of the ESL funds BCS withhold for the next school year is because the district fails to secure some of the Title III funding that is given to school districts with a large increase in immigration.

BCS had not reached the threshold to get the funds, said Barrett, who did not immediately know how much immigration a district needs from year to year in order to receive the grant.

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However, Buncombe County as a whole is experiencing volatile immigration growth. The US Census Bureau reported that 8.7% of the county’s population were born overseas in 2019. In 2018 it was around 5.5%. The previous year it was 6%, and in 2016, about 5% of Buncombe County were born outside of the country.

Those numbers don’t include people living in the country without legal permission – whose districts allow schooling under federal law – and therefore may not reflect the Asheville immigrant community, Asheville immigration attorney William Fay said.

“You’re talking about a community that doesn’t try to get on the map often,” said Fay. “Here you don’t get a high participation in the census or the like. Schools could be the only place where you can get decent staff. “

The state Department of Education does not publicly disclose the total number of immigrant students in schools in North Carolina. The number of immigrants from BCS was also not included in Barrett’s statement of federal funding to the school board.

But even if these numbers were known, they may not indicate how much the loss of funding actually affects ESL students as many are not immigrants.

“We have children who were born here, but their parents don’t speak English,” said Dominguez Aragonez. “Most of the children I look after were born here.”

But others, like Erwin High School junior Brayan Guzman, are immigrants. Guzman moved to Asheville from Mexico two years ago to live with his grandparents after spending a year in Texas.

“It was scary because I didn’t speak English,” he said of starting school in the US. “People asked me something and I couldn’t understand it.”

Guzman said ESL helped him tremendously in school. He even takes classes home with his grandparents, who don’t speak English.

“I’m teaching (them) a little, a few sentences,” he said.

Although ESL has helped Guzman stay afloat in school, he said it would be beneficial to have more ESL teachers as he interacts with some educators better than others.

Dominguez Aragonez agreed.

“I wish I could give the kids more time, but scheduling can be difficult,” she said. “It’s just me – just a teacher who teaches 100 children – so how many individual lessons can I give 100 children if there are eight hours of school? If you do the numbers, that’s unrealistic. “

BCS has only 30 full-time ESL teachers – some of whom work in multiple schools – for its 1,900+ students with English as a second language.

Dominguez Aragonez said that a robust, effective ESL program would not only hire more ESL assistants, it would also mean more access to materials like Rosetta Stone for students and train class teachers to incorporate ESL practices into their classes.

Above all, Dominguez Aragonez said that the way people think about non-English speakers needs to change, especially when they are children.

“Imagine you’re a child and you haven’t asked to be born here or to move here and suddenly you’re deposed,” she said. “You don’t speak the language and nobody speaks your language, and you just sit there and people talk in that language and it’s up to you and you alone to overcome this barrier.”

Shelby Harris is a reporter on education and other topics. She can be reached at sharris@citizentimes.com or on Twitter @_shelbyharris.

source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/buncombe-county-schools-sees-dip-in-immigration-rethinks-esl-spending/