School sees influx of pupils who need academic help
By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
Hillsborough schools are facing hiring two more teachers mid-year to deal with an surprising influx of foreign language students who need help with studies in English.
Judith Haas, chairwoman of the education committee, told the Board of Education on Nov. 24 that the expense would have to come from unbudgeted money. The starting step for a fulltime teacher is about $54,000 in salary alone.
She referred to a report from Enrique Pincay, the district supervisor of world languages, that showed the English Language Learners program has "unprecedented growth" of 50 more students than three years ago.
"All of this diversity increases challenges in our classroom," said Ms. Haas, who said the district needed to hire another ELL teacher and one fulltime teacher bilingual in Spanish right away.
The problem affects all grades, but particularly the high school, she said.
Kids of high school age often have no education foundation in all subjects, she said. They are often placed at the ninth grade level, to give time to catch up educationally, she said.
"We don’t want them to drop out. We want them to succeed," she said.
Younger students are often in the program for two years, she said, giving them time to re-enter classes and stay apace, she said.
A chart in Mr. Pincay’s report showed 138 ELL students in the nine school buildings in October 2011, compared to 183 in October 2014. A pattern from 2011-13 showed that the counts grow during the school year, he wrote.
"Based on this data, it is safe to assume that the initial ELL count in September 2014 will only continue to increase as the school year progresses," he wrote.
There are 29 languages represented in the district’s ELL population this year, Mr. Pincay’s report says. About one-third (31 percent, or 57 students) in the ELL program speak Spanish, with Gujarati the second largest at 12 percent (22 children).
Because there are more than 20 Spanish speakers in the township’s ELL program, the school is required by law to implement a bilingual program to service them appropriately, Mr. Pincay wrote.
The state allows a district file a "bilingual education waiver" if it believes it impractical to implement a program. Hillsborough files a waiver every year based on the distance between school and the size (54 square miles) of the township.
One of the conditions of the waiver is that the district must service the Spanish speakers with an additional period of ESL.
"Because of this, every Spanish-speaking student counts as two when it comes to services and scheduling," the report says.
Federal law and a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision makes it clear that schools cannot deny access to a basic public education to any child residing in the state, whether present in the United States legally or otherwise.
Mr. Pincay’s report shows 25 percent of students in the ELL program whose primary language may be Akan, Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, French, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Malayalam, Marathi, Polish, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Twi or Ukranian.
Hillsborough educates about 7,200 students.

