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Boston Globe

BPS English learners face limited bilingual education options

BPS is slowly rolling out an expansion to its multilingual and bilingual program, but it hasn't been enough to keep up with the district's growing immigrant population. About a third of BPS's 48,000-student population are English learners, and half of pre-K and kindergarten students entering the district are. Most are being placed in an English immersion program under the district's new inclusion model. The growth of the bilingual programs will be incremental, and only five new teachers being added for the next school year districtwide. The new bilingual programs are aimed at younger students, and are only available in a select number of schools; 220 students in kindergarten and first grade this coming school year will be placed in a dual language program, considered among researchers to be the gold standard of bilingual education for which students are taught in both English and the students' native languages. However, many students like Camila, who arrived to Boston without speaking English and who would benefit the most from bilingual instruction, generally don't get access to these classrooms. Related : Advertisement By the 2032-22 school year, BPS plans to add a total of 40 teachers and 1,060 students in multilingual or bilingual classrooms, which would be able to serve a fraction of the current EL population. Advertisement Manuel Ramirez, BPS director of bilingual programs under Office of Multicultural and Multilingual Education, said the new program expansions are specifically designated to areas where the district identified the most need for home language inclusion. 'We're working in collaboration with communities so that students not only have greater access districtwide, but are also having their specific needs addressed,' Ramirez said. Advocates say the district's current programs are not well equipped to teach students from different language backgrounds, and students' academic progress is suffering as a result. Only over a quarter of EL and former EL students met or exceeded In late 2023, the majority the BPS task force created to advise the School Committee on how to best serve the needs of students learning English The current program 'is tragic because it is failing so many of the large proportion of EL students in Boston,' Mudd said. Advertisement Still, Joelle Gamere, chief of multilingual office said while just a handful of bilingual classrooms and teachers will be added to the district, it's much more of an investment than in years past. 'In the last 18 months, we've expanded on bilingual education more so than we've done in the last 40 years,' Gamere said. Jackelyn Elias started teaching in Blackstone nine years ago for the English learner program, and will now lead the new bilingual program at Blackstone. Elias said she is translating the kinder program into Spanish before the beginning of the school year. The bilingual program for kindergarten at Blackstone will teach phonetics, learning centers, and beginner reading in Spanish. Each year, the program will expand to the following grade, so the same students can continue to learn in the bilingual program. In third grade, the classroom will then switch from teaching mostly in Spanish, to half English instruction and half Spanish instruction. Elias said she is excited about the expansion and about teaching kids in Spanish, which she said will help bilingual students get ahead. 'We're just trying to form a strong program, we're working very hard on trying to learn what we need for students,' Elias said. In 2010, Department of Justice officials found BPS was violating the rights of thousands of English learners and failed to provide English learners with specialized instruction, setting up an agreement to monitor the school's progress, which just Advertisement Next year, seven BPS schools in the K-12 level will have some sort of bilingual program available to a few students, most classrooms will be for kindergarteners. In Quincy, for example, the school will offer math in Mandarin. For Ordoñez, Camila's transition to Blackstone had some positives, particularly the support in Spanish she received. Camila was awarded for a story she wrote in English, and finished Blackstone as a top student. Still, as Ordoñez couldn't find more language supports in BPS upper grades for her daughter's grade level next year, she is moving Camila out of the district and into a neighborhood charter school, which also doesn't have a bilingual program. Erik Berg, president of the Boston Teachers Union said there is a need for more teachers in the district specifically trained in bilingual education, and new programs should consider the wide variety of students' backgrounds and needs, especially during the landscape of the Trump administration and the deportation of families that may need these programs. 'It is critical that in rolling out any new program that the school community and language community are included on the planning,' Berg said. 'And that they take time to be thoughtful and provide parents with a plan that won't disrupt student learning.' Maria Probert can be reached at