‘Enormous increase’: JCPS tested by sharp rise in students who don’t speak English

On an April afternoon, hundreds of students gathered in Newcomer Academy's gymnasium, their phones poised to capture scenes from the school's fashion show as their peers and teachers showed off attire from their home countries of Burundi, Guatemala, India and more.

With more than two dozen languages spoken inside the school, it is likely one of the most diverse places in Louisville — and all of Kentucky.

While Newcomer Academy, which opened about a decade ago, has served as a landing spot for many newly arrived international students, public schools throughout Jefferson County have seen an influx in the same student groups. Now, 1 in 5 students in Kentucky's largest school system were born outside of the United States.

In all, Kentucky's public schools have seen a 400% increase over the past 20 years in its number of students who don't speak English — one of the largest increases nationwide. Only Mississippi and South Carolina have seen such a jump, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

For those who leave their home countries and move to Kentucky, 80% come to Louisville. As of May 1, Jefferson County Public Schools had nearly 20,000 multilingual students — about 10,000 more students compared to five years ago. The total grew by 800 just since mid-March.

The sharp increase has forced JCPS to reallocate money, expand training and get creative in its approach to helping international students get the needed support to succeed in school.

The effort comes at a time when the state's funding level for this special population has remained the lowest of all subgroups, and the district has struggled to find teachers and translators.

"We have had an enormous increase of multilingual students, and the funding we are receiving from the state and feds is not keeping up," said JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio.

These students used to largely head to Newcomer Academy before transitioning into their home schools, but now many schools are receiving multilingual students as soon as they arrive in Louisville. There are now more than 150 different languages spoken within the district.

JCPS has moved away from calling the students English-as-a-second-language students, instead calling them multilingual learners to focus on the assets they bring instead of what could be seen as a deficit.

Seneca's 'game changer'

Since 2020, Seneca High's rate of multilingual students has nearly doubled, from 207 students to 383 in August, though that number has continued to increase throughout the year.

This challenge prompted Seneca's staff to implement a new peer tutoring program based on a model developed at Fairdale High that recruits international students who have learned English to help their newly arrived peers.

In Erin Brock's biology class, a group of students from Honduras, Mexico and Cuba sit together each afternoon as she gives the class instructions for their next assignment. After every few sentences, junior Emily Camps repeats the teacher's directives to the table in their native language. Camps came to Kentucky about three years ago from Cuba. This year she began serving as one of about 25 Seneca High peer tutors, each earning a credit hour for assisting during a class where there's a high rate of students who have yet to learn English.

Most of the tutors assist Spanish-speaking students, though there are some who speak Arabic and Wolof, a West African language.

"I see myself in them; I know how difficult it is for them," Camps said of the students she helps. One of them, a boy from Honduras, came to the country just a few weeks prior.

Camps said her first year in a JCPS school was really difficult because she couldn't understand her teachers.

"I really care about school and my grades and they made me feel so sad," she said. "So, I decided I have to learn English. ... I wish I had the opportunity that they do now."

Seneca's peer tutoring program started this school year and, for Brock, the help has been "a game changer," the teacher said.

"We have so many kids that speak so many languages," she said of the school. With 30 students in a class and a subset that needs more assistance, Brock said she felt like she was failing to teach.

But now, in the three classes where she has a peer tutor, her multilingual students are getting A's and B's, she said.

In the classes without the tutors, though, "it is tough," she said, explaining that she prints assignments in her students' native language and translates their answers back to English, but she worries about whether they understand her lectures.

"You can see it on their faces how stressful it is coming into the classroom," Brock said of newly arrived multilingual students. A JCPS teacher for the past 11 years, she noted the sharp increase in this population, which comes as the school and district have simultaneously lost much of their translation support. JCPS has open translator positions, but they are hard to fill.

That lack of support makes communicating with students and their families more difficult.

Because of the tutoring program, Brock said, "it’s like night and day in the classes I have them and the classes I don’t."

Money, resources lacking for multilingual learners

Despite the tremendous increase in multilingual students, funding for this group has remained "incredibly underwhelming," said Jill Handley, the assistant superintendent who oversees the district's multilingual department.

Within the state's funding formula, the district receives a set amount for each student enrolled, but there are additional dollars provided for students with special needs — such as those who have disabilities, are experiencing homelessness, live in impoverished households or haven't learned English. Of each of these groups, though, districts receive the least amount of financial support to assist non-native English speakers.

JCPS received roughly $64 million from the state to help serve about 12,000 students with disabilities, while it received about $6 million in state funding for multilingual learners.

The district is funding Handley's department similarly to how it did 10 years ago when there were just a few thousand multilingual students, Pollio said.

In next year's proposed budget, JCPS is allocating an additional $9.2 million for the multilingual department — much of which will flow directly to schools with a large number of international students. The supplemental funds will allow the schools to creatively address the needs of these students, JCPS officials said. Board members will vote on the budget at the end of May.

Schools considered "high density," which factors in not just students considered multilingual but also those who are newcomers to the country, are set to receive about $35,000 each. There are 16 schools within the district with this label.

Another challenge is the lack of teachers coming out of their college programs with the credentials to serve multilingual students.

"We could probably hire every single ESL teacher from all the universities in the region and it still might not be enough," Pollio said.

Because of this, Handley and her team have moved their focus away from training those specific teachers and are instead providing professional development to teachers in all content areas.

"We're building the capacity of all stakeholders," Handley said. "It can't just be the ESL teacher's job to do everything — everyone needs to play a role in helping multilingual students."

Because "Helping English language development is not a side thing," she said, they are asking teachers to "immerse that in all of the academics."

This effort is going beyond the classroom, too, with the district recently providing front office staff with training on how to better serve international families, in addition to giving the offices iPads with an interpreter app.

Handley said she hopes the tutoring program benefitting Seneca and Fairdale catches the sight of administrators at other schools, too.

"The biggest challenge is that the influx came quickly," she said. "We are putting systems in place, but systems take time to build."

But, Handley and district leaders are committed to providing these students a good education, she said.

"This is not a fad, this is not going away," Handley said of the city's increasing international population. "Because Louisville is a compassionate city, people are going to continue to relocate here."

Contact Krista Johnson at kjohnson3@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: JCPS tested by sharp rise in foreign students who don't speak English