Sept. 5, 2007 — English as a second language instruction in V.I. public schools is suffering because of difficulty finding and hiring enough ESL-qualified teachers, Education officials told the Senate Education, Culture and Youth Committee Wednesday in Frederiksted.
Increasing ESL instruction is critical both to ensure the student body as a whole meets federal No Child Left Behind Act standards and to fulfill V.I. law’s requirement that “children should not be deprived of equal educational opportunities due to their limited command of the English language,” said Assistant Commissioner of Education Lauren Larsen. But, he said, the department has tried in vain to recruit enough teachers.
“In spite of the efforts … to recruit teachers in Puerto Rico and the United States, there is a shortage of bilingual education teachers in St. Croix,” Larsen said. “At present there are 24 teachers and … four paraprofessionals.”
Because of the teacher shortage, programs were consolidated into a small group of schools on each island and there are no native-language programs, Larsen said. He emphasized that Education had improved several aspects of the ESL program, conducted tutorials and other school programs for English learners and helped teachers pay for classes on teaching English as a second language.
The high cost of living on St. Croix is a major hurdle in recruiting, said Yvonne Rivera, coordinator of bilingual education and ESL for St. Croix.
“We may pay a little more than some districts in Puerto Rico,” she said. “But they may already have a house and so on back home, and even with a bit more money may not be able to buy a house in the Virgin Islands.”
It would help if UVI provided ESL courses, Rivera said.
“If teachers from here could take the classes here, that would make the cost of moving and living here less of a factor and recruiting much easier,” Rivera said. Larsen agreed.
An increasing non-English-speaking population makes the problems more severe.
“Of great concern is the fact that many of the incoming students from the … Dominican Republic are overage and underschooled,” Larsen said. In previous testimony to the Senate, Larsen has said the public schools are having a difficult time serving students who have recently arrived in the territory with no previous formal education at all. There is no mechanism for dealing with that situation, other than programs for the developmentally challenged, which are inappropriate for healthy but unschooled older children.
During the 2006-07 school year, the St. Thomas/St. John school district identified a total of 763 students whose language at home is not English, of which a total of 321 students were identified as English-language learners, and therefore received ESL services. On St. Croix, 1,058 students were identified whose language at home is not English, of whom 379 are in ESL classes. Most are Spanish speakers, though Larsen said there are also Arabic and French speakers, as well as a small number speaking African languages and dialects.
The senators discussed speaking with UVI officials to see about offering the courses, increasing salaries for ESL teachers and other possible actions. No legislation or legislative action was taken at Wednesday’s information-gathering hearing.
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