Texas schools struggle with immigrant students By Los Angeles Times, adapted by Newsela staff on 09.21.14 Word Count 939 Level 1130L Principal Maria Moreno works with recently enrolled Central American immigrant students at Las Americas Newcomer Middle School in Houston, Texas. Molly Hennessy-Fiske/Los Angeles Times/MCT HOUSTON, Texas — A year ago, the Las Americas Newcomer Middle School in the low-income Gulfton neighborhood started the semester with 150 immigrant and refugee students. When the new school year began last month, enrollment skyrocketed to 325 students, most of them newly arrived from Central America. “It’s put a burden on me because I’ve run out of space,” Principal Maria Moreno said of the school’s dozen portable classrooms set up behind another middle school. She hired five new teachers and a social worker. The school converted a teachers lounge and school police office into classrooms and used surplus money to buy projectors, laptops and desktop computers. Moreno still had to turn away more than 100 students who wanted to attend Las Americas this year. “That’s not going to stop,” Moreno said. She knows that because her school cannot accept them, the students will have to apply somewhere else nearby. She doesn't know if the school next door This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. will be equipped to handle them. Texas Feels The Burden That’s a question facing educators across the country. School districts from California to Georgia and Maryland have had to add English-as-a-second-language, or ESL, programs and social services to help new immigrants. Oakland, California, has even hired an employee just to provide “unaccompanied minor support services.” Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida, home to one of the country’s largest Honduran communities, requested federal assistance this year. They have enrolled 1,469 Central American students since the past school year, including 901 from Honduras. The impact of the recent surge of immigration is being felt most strongly in Texas. More than 66,000 unaccompanied young immigrants crossed into the United States illegally in the past year. Most of them entered through Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, 37,477 of those children have been released to sponsors across the country as of July 31. The largest number of these children, 5,280, went to Texas. Of those, 2,866 have been placed in the Houston area. More Than Just English Language Difficulties Texas has long served students who were in the country illegally, and a 1982 Supreme Court case held that the state could not deny them an education. Texas also absorbed 35,000 students displaced from Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. The current wave, though smaller, presents special challenges to educators. Many of these students, Moreno said, are fleeing countries in disorder and need counseling and other social services. One 14-year-old Honduran boy traveled as far as Guadalajara, Mexico, with his mother where she ran out of money and told him to hop cargo trains, alone, the rest of the way. Most students don’t speak English. Some native Central American children barely speak Spanish, like the Honduran boy who spoke Mayan Quiche and kept asking Moreno in Spanish, “How do you say this in Spanish?” The Las Americas school, which serves grades 4 through 8, has students from 23 countries who speak 17 languages. Arabic, Nepali and Swahili were more common than Spanish until recently. Houston public schools, which plan to expand the Newcomers program, have already enrolled 1,825 new students from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Complicated Numbers Some Texans fear that the schools cannot afford the newcomers. Texas Education Agency officials, who oversee the state’s more than 1,200 school districts and charters, say they already budgeted to cover the extra students. They can also draw from a state fund with a $263 million surplus if new costs arise. Agency officials estimate that it will pay districts $9,473 to educate each ESL student this academic year. That’s $1,573 more than the Agency paid for the typical student. This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. If most of the young immigrants placed in Texas enroll in school, the total cost of educating them could top $50 million. Federal officials say that it is difficult to estimate how many of the young immigrants have enrolled in schools. The U.S. Department of Education has released suggestions to schools, but has not counted the total costs. “The financial impact of unaccompanied immigrant children is an incredibly complicated number to calculate in a particular state, district or school, much less nationally. It depends on a range of local factors,” department spokeswoman Dorie Nolt said. Those factors include the number of ESL students already in a school and the level of community programs and state support. Also key is existing enrollment, Nolt said, adding that some districts in cities may have extra capacity. “There was this concern at first that there was going to be this flood of kids,” Nolt said. Some districts in cities have seen a lot of new, immigrant students, but the vast majority have not, she added. Progress In Small Ways Congressman Lamar Smith and some other Texans complain that the migrants will place new demands on already overcrowded schools. “Regrettably, American taxpayers will be asked to foot the bill for the burden on these school districts,” said Smith, a Republican. In the Houston area, some counties and cities have recently passed resolutions condemning federal efforts to house migrant children in temporary shelters. Others have directed officials not to cooperate with federal authorities to maintain the facilities. Moreno has spoken to community groups opposed to immigration to ease concerns. “What’s better than having an educated child who can get a job and pay taxes?” she said. “You want them to be educated and fend for themselves.” Moreno said she stopped to talk recently to the 14-year-old Honduran boy who rode the trains north. He had transformed himself in a few short weeks, from class clown to dedicated student, she said. Moreno took that as a sign of progress. This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. Quiz 1 2 3 4 Select the sentence that DOES NOT support the central idea of the article. (A) When the new school year began last month, enrollment skyrocketed to 325 students, most of them newly arrived from Central America. (B) The current wave, though smaller, presents special challenges to educators. (C) The Las Americas school, which serves grades 4 through 8, has students from 23 countries who speak 17 languages. (D) Some Texans fear that the schools cannot afford the newcomers. Schools across the United States are facing all of the following issues to educate immigrant kids EXCEPT: (A) they have to add English-as-a-second-language programs (B) they have to provide counseling sessions to their parents (C) they have to get additional federal assistance (D) they need to provide social services to them Which sentence provides evidence to the author's claim that the financial impact to educate immigrant kids is quite immense? (A) According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, 37,477 of those children have been released to sponsors across the country as of July 31. (B) Agency officials estimate that it will pay districts $9,473 to educate each ESL student this academic year. That's $1,573 more than the Agency paid for the typical student. (C) The financial impact of unaccompanied immigrant children is an incredibly complicated number to calculate in a particular state, district or school, much less nationally. (D) "Regrettably, American taxpayers will be asked to foot the bill for the burden on these school districts," Smith said. Read the sentence from the article. Arabic, Nepali and Swahili were more common than Spanish until recently. Why did the author include this sentence in the article? (A) to show that most immigrant kids studying in U.S. schools don't know English or Spanish (B) to show that immigrant kids studying in U.S. schools belong to a wide range of countries (C) to emphasize the wide variety of languages that these immigrant kids speak (D) to describe the importance of learning Spanish to study in U.S. schools This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.
