Norwood Public Schools See Influx Of English Language Learners

NORWOOD, MA - The Norwood Public Schools has enrolled more than 320 new students since July, many for whom English is not their primary language, presenting a challenge to the district.

Dana Brown, the Director of Strategic Initiatives and Logistics for the school department, presented an update to the district's strategic plan to the Norwood School Committee last week. It has been in place since 2019 and extends until 2024. In it, he noted that the number of English language learner, or ELL, students has continued to climb.

The district hired Lisa Bourgeois as its English language learner coordinator earlier this year to provide support to this increasing population.

"In a short amount of time, she has made some great strides in our English learner department and has us asking the right questions and has us going in the right direction," Brown said.

Another staff addition is Sherry Sullivan, who serves as a central registrar and administrative assistant.

"I will say, although she registered a bunch during the summer, there has been a steady stream of new students since September 1," Brown noted.

Superintendent David Thomson agreed that there has been a "slower stream but a consistent stream" of new students since September.

"Many of the students who are coming in are not speaking English as a first language or are coming in with educational plans after we have started the school year," he explained. "We're in very unusual times. This kind of influx this late in the game is highly unusual, and it is still going."

He added that it "may very well be a consistent pattern throughout the year."

Brown added that there are "students from 25 different countries that are new to the Norwood Public Schools."

Bourgeois said there were 438 ELL students districtwide at the time of the meeting, which is 13 perent of the total stuent population. Of those ELL students, some of the languages spoken include Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, French, Albanian, Arabic and Nepali.

"We are a wealth of language and exposures to different cultures and expereinces and traditions," she said. "If anything, it's adding an overall richness to Norwood."

To address this growing population, Thomson made a budget request for an additional full-time English language learner teacher at the Willett Early Education Center because its ELL students have not been able to meet their instruction time requirements.

Bourgeois said there were 262 students at the Willett in a report from three weeks ago, 73 of whom are ELL students. At the time of the meeting, five more students were about to be added.

More than half of those ELL students "have either no English or very limited English," she said. There are only two full-time teachers there to address this growing need for language acquisition, and she explained that service delivery minutes only count toward the ELL education if provided by a licensed ESL teacher. ELL students on the lower end of the proficiency scale are required to receive 450 minutes of direct instruction.

"So knowing tht information and knowing the number of students that we have in need, we are noncompliant in regard to the recommended minutes for those students," Bourgeois said.

This is the age when language skills are most easily learned, Thomson added.

"We are also seeing an influx of relatively low-level English speakers at the high school," Thomson continued, spurring a request for an ELL teacher there.

Norwood High School Principal Hugh Galligan said that in a typical school year over the past five years, 35 new students enroll. At the time of the meeting, there were 89 - 16 who are English language learners.

"We have seen a shift into a much larger number of students coming in with zero English at this point in time," he said, "as well as a significant number of students with significant gaps in their education or significantly over age. Each of those cases has very different needs as well."

Another student population that has risen is those who receive special education services, which Brown said is currently above the state average.

Thomson presented several staffing requests to the School Committee, including Willett's request. At the high school, there is a need for one long-term substitute teacher for an ELL teacher, one long-term substitute special education teacher, and two paraprofessionals at the high school. The Coakley Middle School also requested a paraprofessional to help students meet their individualized education plans, or IEPs.

Funding would come out of the general budget because of an earlier staffing spend-down earlier in the year, although he noted the new hires would "pretty much exhaust this resource."

"This does fall outside of the override agreement because these are special ed needs and English language learner needs," he added. The override was approved in June 2019.

"Unfortunately these are not needs tht we planned for last spring," he added, noting that finding teachers is an additional challenge.

He also explained that there is a process that is followed to determine when staffing requests are made.

The committee voted unanimously to approve the requested positions.