Cash-strapped school district seeks funds for English learners

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Thursday, July 11, 2002 | 11:06 a.m.

With Hispanic children already accounting for a third of the seats in local classrooms, Clark County School District officials say their challenge is to keep up with the growing wave of students who need help learning English.

For the 2001-2002 school year, Hispanic children already accounted for more than 87 percent of the students enrolled in English Language Learner programs, according to district records.

Clark County School Superintendent Carlos Garcia, as part of a proposed $907 million education improvement plan, is seeking $77 million in additional funds from the state for ELL programs.

"There's no question helping these kids achieve literacy in English should be a priority for us, and for all of Nevada," Garcia said in an earlier interview. "If anything is a precursor for future success, it's this."

The district has already "cut down to the bone," reducing high school transportation and eliminating middle school athletics for the coming year, Garcia said. The administrative services division also cut eight positions for English Language Learner facilitators.

The next cuts will likely be to actual academic services, and there is no money to expand the programs already in place, Garcia said.

If the number of Hispanic students continues to grow at the current rate, the 30.6 percent recorded for the 2001-2002 school year could become more than 50 percent in the next 10 years, demographers say.

White children made up 47.7 percent of the 244,000 students enrolled for the 2001-2002 school year, 30.6 percent were Hispanic, 13.8 percent were black and 7.9 percent described themselves as "other," according to the Clark County School District's demographics records.

The percentage of white students has dropped nearly 9 percentage points in five years, from 56.3 percent in 1997. This is the second consecutive year that the district's enrollment has had a majority of minority students.

The numbers come as no surprise to district officials, who say they have been tracking the shift for more than five years. What isn't known yet is how the district will handle the new challenges that come with such changes in demographics.

Clark County School Board Member Larry Mason said the district's budget woes could make it difficult to keep up with the increasing demand for bilingual instruction and services. Many of the new arrivals to the district have limited English skills, which puts them at a disadvantage, Mason said.

"We need to bring those kids up to speed quickly, or they're going to have a hard time," Mason said. "But we're also facing a flat budget, which means there's little money for those types of remedial programs."

More Hispanics drop out of Clark County schools than any other ethnic group, accounting for more than a third of the students who left without graduating in the 2000-2001 school year, according to district officials.

"I wonder how many of those children would still be in school if they had gotten the appropriate services early on," Mason said.

Mason singled out for praise Rowe Elementary School Principal Marianne Long, who has set up family reading nights to encourage parents to learn along with their children.

"We need to figure out what people are doing here and in other communities that's working, and apply it district-wide," Mason said. "The quality of your child's ELL services shouldn't depend on which school you're zoned for."

The growth in Hispanic enrollment shows no signs of abating, School District officials say.

"We're seeing a definite shift in balance," said Dusty Dickens, director of demographics and zoning for the district.

Similar patterns are emerging in other Southwestern school communities, Dickens said, although the rate of change may be higher in Clark County because of the population boom. The nation's fastest-growing region, Clark County's population soared 85 percent between 1990 and 2000, according to the federal census. Clark County's enrollment, already the nation's sixth-largest, is expected to crack the quarter-million mark this fall.

The School District uses the ethnicity statistics to figure out zoning patterns for new schools and facilities, Dickens said. The goal is to have schools reflect the level of diversity district-wide, without creating unnecessary hardships for students, Dickens said.

Aldo Aguirre, a consultant with the Nevada Department of Education's special education and diversity program, said Clark County's ethnicity is directly affected by the political climate not only in Nevada, but in surrounding states as well.

The passage of "English only" education laws in Arizona and California have brought a flood of new residents to the Silver State, Aguirre said.

"We don't live in a vacuum, we're influenced by what happens at the regional and national levels," said Aguirre, who is a candidate for the Board of Regents.