An influx of foreign-born students speaking Russian and Ukrainian is a significant factor behind a new trend in Indian Prairie School District 204.
The district is seeing more and more students in need of support to learn the English language, administrators say.
The number of English Learners, as educators call these students, rose by 241 from last school year, and now sits at 4,204. This means 15.8% of the district’s roughly 26,000 students are English Learners — a major change from only 2.5% nearly two decades ago during the 2005-06 year.
More students, less staff
Despite this increase in students, the district’s English Language Learning department is down the equivalent of 0.9 full-time positions from last year, said Rafael Segerra, director of English Language Learning Services. The staff now includes 110.7 full-time-equivalent positions — largely certified teachers and teaching assistants, with a couple administrators and a secretary.
Each English Language Learning teacher has an average caseload of 56 students. In an ideal world, Segerra said, the district would hire eight more certified teachers to bring caseloads down and allow more instructional time with each student.
“We are doing the best job we can with our kids based on what is available in terms of our resources,” Segerra told school board members during Monday’s meeting. “I did some rearranging of staffing across the district … to provide as many services as we can across the board without taking a hit in the wallet.”
District 204 is 85% funded, according to the state’s evidence-based funding formula, which means the state recognizes the district is not getting all the money it needs, officials say.
School board members on Monday praised English Language Learning staffers for doing more with less, especially as they adjust to the increase in students speaking Eastern European languages.
Newcomers from Eastern Europe create new language needs
“The face of our program, demographic-wise, is changing,” said Traci Weigel, English Language Learning coordinator. “Now, we’re having many more students who are qualifying as newcomers coming to the country with very little English.”
“Newcomers” are considered foreign-born students who have arrived in the U.S. within the past two years, Wiegel said. Many of those arriving recently speak Russian or Ukrainian. There are now 425 Russian-speaking students in need of English Language Learning services and 106 Ukrainian speakers, up from 328 and 82 last year, respectively.
With the conflict ongoing between Russia and Ukraine, this migration is a nationwide phenomenon, and many districts are struggling to find qualified staff.
“Clearly, the influx of newcomer students to our district brings a set of areas of need that need to be addressed,” Segerra said.
Helping students learn English quickly
The district has created a Newcomers Resource Guide to list academic, district and community resources that can assist newly arrived families. Segerra said administrators are finalizing translations of the document into Spanish and Russian, which will be available online soon.
School board member Supna Jain encouraged the district to continue seeking creative ways to meet student needs as they work to gain academic fluency in English. She and others on the board praised the district for helping students gain English proficiency faster than the state average.
Students leave the English Language Learning program when they receive a proficient score on a standardized test designed to measure attainment of language skills, Segerra said. Statewide, 6.2% of English Learners qualified to exit the program last year, but in District 204, the exit rate was nearly three times higher, at 16.7%.
School board member Susan Demming called these results “extremely encouraging.”
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