The academic achievement gap between Latinos and whites in North Carolina is closing, but there is still work to be done, officials say.
There are between 46 and 50 English as a Second Language teachers in the Durham school district currently, distributed over roughly half of the district's schools. Schools with ESL programs have anywhere from one to four teachers. Durham increased its ESL hires last year, but ESL teachers are often the only ones in a school system that can communicate with Latino students and parents which creates a high work volume and diminishes their ability to give students personal attention and properly monitor their progress.
"[Succeeding in public schools is] a problem even if the ESL program is good," said Angelina Schiavone, director of El Centro Hispano in Durham. "The ESL teacher is expected to fulfill so many functions for those students--a teacher, counselor, liaison and social worker," she said.
Priscilla Morrow, secretary for the ESL program in Durham Public Schools, said ESL teachers are "a bit overloaded" compared to ordinary teachers.
"They translate for the school, and that pulls them away from their other duties," she said, adding that the rationale for having more than one teacher at a school is to relieve some of that stress by delegating the various responsibilities of the ESL program.
Chapel Hill and Carborro schools contract out their translation to a private company which helps alleviate some of these duties.
Students are not the only ones who suffer when bilingual resources are stretched. "It is hard for parents when they can't communicate with their child's teacher," said Sabrina Simon. "They're not able to get a lot of feedback on how their child is doing in school, and sometimes [parents] wish they could help their child with their homework more than they are able to."
Latino students who do excel often face obstacles in financing post-secondary education if they are not legal residents of North Carolina.
"A lot of students that were not born here don't qualify for in-state tuition and the cost [of attending a public university] becomes three times as much," Schiavone said.
In Texas and California, students who have studied for a minimum time period in the United States--generally four to five years--are considered residents for the purposes of college admissions, aid and scholarships. The North Carolina General Assembly is considering a similar measure.
"[States with this policy] understand that if you don't integrate [Latino students] into the higher education system you're going to end up with a whole generation of people who are underemployed and underpaid," Schiavone said. "You're not creating the bilingual professionals that your community needs."
The state has been responding to the need for ESL programs over the last decade in response to the enormous influx of Latino immigrants into the state.
"[Services available to Latinos are] not quite adequate... but they're getting there and the state has done a good job of recognizing some of those needs," said Hector Perez, director of El Centro Latino of Orange County. "It is still a very young community and the state is in some ways playing catch up to meet the needs of this new community that has been here for approximately 10 years in big numbers."
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