New lab to help adults learn English

By Emily Richmond

Thursday, Jan. 6, 2005 | 10:56 a.m.

For Gaby Lopez, enrolling in the Clark County School District's adult education program was a necessity because she has three young children who speak English better than she does.

"They have a vocabulary, a whole world I don't understand," said Lopez, 32, who has two sons attending a Las Vegas middle school and a daughter in kindergarten. "With this program I have progressed and I can communicate with them better."

In a few months Lopez, along with the thousands of other adults learning English as a second language through school district programs, will have a brand new computer lab to help them with their studies.

The program recently was awarded a $50,000 grant for the lab from the League of United Latin American Citizens, said Priscilla Rocha, coordinator of the district's Community ESL program and executive director of the locally based Hispanic Association for Bilingual Literacy and Education, or HABLE.

The computer lab is slated to open in March on the campus of the district's Morris Academy alternative education school on East Washington Avenue east of Pecos Road. The adults will be able to enroll in distance education classes and earn their diplomas, Rocha said.

They then will be eligible for a new online vocational job training program offered jointly by the U.S. and Mexican departments of education, Rocha said.

The vocational program is already in place in California and other states, including Utah and Arizona, are preparing to sign on, Rocha said. When the computer lab opens in the spring, Clark County will become the first district in Nevada to offer the program.

There are currently 1,700 adults, many of whom are also parents of district students, enrolled in the district's adult ESL program, Rocha said. Most of the participants have little or no formal education and are working toward an elementary-level completion certificate.

The district also has 467 adults enrolled in an evening tutorial program, where parents of students in grades one through four attended ESL classes from 5 to 8 p.m. at a handful of school sites throughout the district. Child care along with tutoring and homework help sessions is provided for the students.

The program is helping to bridge the gap between parents and schools, Rocha said.

"Parents will be able to go to school meetings and communicate with teachers who don't speak Spanish," Rocha said. "Too many people have to rely on their children to be translators."

A $390,000 federal grant secured last month by Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., will allow the tutorial program to expand to include former district students who have dropped out of high school, Rocha said. Of those federal dollars, $92,000 will be used to outfit a mobile learning center that will travel to housing complexes and rural areas, encouraging people to sign up for classes and programs, Rocha said.

Tony Sanchez, immediate past president of the Latin Chamber of Commerce, said the district's initiatives are badly needed and the computer lab will help fill a significant gap.

"When it comes to having access to the Internet and basic computer skills, Latinos lag behind all other minority groups," Sanchez said. "When you're thinking about how to pay the rent and put food in your kids' stomachs there isn't a lot discretionary income available for home technology."

The Latin Chamber of Commerce at 13th Street and Stewart Avenue two miles east of City Hall has a computer lab as well, Sanchez said. At the lab the focus is on helping individuals create resumes and hunt for work.

"The days of going into an office and filling out an application is becoming a thing of the past," Sanchez said. "Many of the casinos have already switched to online applications and if people don't have the basic technical ability to deal with that, they'll be shut out of the jobs."

For Martha Ruiz, who moved from Mexico to Las Vegas six months ago, the district's ESL program is an opportunity to get the language proficiency she needs to enroll in a community college accounting program. Ruiz, 20, earned her high school diploma in Mexico and says she was a good student, but that has carried little weight with potential employers.

If she's not ready for the college entrance exams when the ESL class finishes in May, Ruiz said she plans to enroll in the district's distance education program, using the new computer lab.

"It's difficult to get a good job here if you don't speak English," Ruiz said.