Here & Now

State Budget: English Language Learners

Frederica Freyberg:
A first look tonight at the state budget specifically for English learners in K-12 schools. Marisa Wojcik takes us to Green Bay and Abbotsford for the story.

Translator for Gilda Bay Agredar:
[speaking Spanish] Let’s say being here in the United States it’s very difficult.

Marisa Wojcik:
Imagine being surrounded by a language you don’t understand.

Translator for Gilda Bay Agredar:
There’s people that they push us aside only because we don’t know English.

Marisa Wojcik:
Now imagine trying to learn in a language you don’t understand.

Translator for Gilda Bay Agredar:
I try to look for support in others, but because I don’t know English, I can’t look for that support.

Marisa Wojcik:
Now imagine you are a school district providing this programming to hundreds even thousands of students with little or no aid from the state. This is the reality for school districts in Wisconsin.

Julie Seefeldt:
Green Bay is a district of about 21,000 students. 4,500 of those students are English learners. So it’s about 23% of our population.

Marisa Wojcik:
State and federal mandates require school districts to provide services to accommodate English language learners. In Wisconsin, the primary source of funding comes from bilingual bicultural aid.

Julie Seefeldt:
We have an approved bilingual bicultural program with the state of Wisconsin. We do get reimbursed for the cost of educating English learners. It’s a little below 8%.

Marisa Wojcik:
A national non-profit focusing on educational policy said of the states that provide this funding, Wisconsin is at the bottom of the pack.

Zahava Stadler:
This appropriation, if every kid were getting it, which is not quite true, would work out to about $200 a kid. Which frankly by national standards is pitiful.

Marisa Wojcik:
She attributes this to the amount of funding and how the funds are distributed.

Anne Chapman:
Wisconsin does provide funding for bilingual bicultural aid. It’s a special program that’s sort of added on top of the regular, you know, funding formula. It’s called categorical aid. This program only benefits school districts with certain concentrations of bilingual students.

Marisa Wojcik:
For a district like Green Bay with the third highest ELL student population in the state, they do receive bilingual bicultural aid for their students that have high numbers. The most common being Spanish speakers, Hmong and Somali students.

Julie Seefeldt:
For example we have some students who speak Swahili in this district but we have less than 10. And so we do not get reimbursement for the teachers who work with those Swahili-speaking students.

Anne Chapman:
School districts that receive no aid at all have to pull all the resources that they need to serve those students from their regular budget.

Marisa Wojcik:
And the need is growing.

Anne Chapman:
The funding levels are very low for the needs and all the districts that serve these students are struggling.

Julie Seefeldt:
English learners are the fastest growing population out there. Wisconsin has seen continued growth the past four to five years. This population has specific needs, and the current funding is just not meeting those needs.

Marisa Wojcik:
But it’s not just large districts like Green Bay navigating how to provide support to English language learners. Abbotsford, a small rural district, supports one third of their student population with bilingual, bicultural programming.

Georgia Kraus:
The program has just continued to grow and that brings in a whole new set of challenges.

Marisa Wojcik:
The population of Spanish speakers in Abbotsford has been steadily growing, filling jobs at a local meat industry in town.

Cheryl Baker:
The specific population that’s being drawn to these areas — they are being drawn because they can find work without competing. Right now, in Clark County alone, we cannot create enough workers for all the positions that are open.

Marisa Wojcik:
Some even end up working for the very school district that educated them. It can take years to be classified as English proficient. While learning English, they also need to keep up with their regular academic content. To compound the strain on a small district. Abbotsford has to meet other student needs.

Amber Kraus:
We’ve got English learners who are academically gifted and we’ve got English learners who have been out of school for a few years and helping them catch up academically.

Marisa Wojcik:
The district purchases materials that are both in English and Spanish.

Georgia Kraus:
The students actually sometimes will have two books on their desk: an English copy and a Spanish copy and then they bridge themselves.

Marisa Wojcik:
They provide bilingual guidance counselors and teachers aids and just recently, they started a dual language emersion program. Half the day all the students learn in Spanish and the other half all students learn in English.

Amber Kraus:
It’s not viewed as I’m different from you, no. It’s viewed as we’re learning this together.

Marisa Wojcik:
And these students need support beyond academics.

Translator for Laura Gutierrez Velazquez:
They don’t speak your language. That can affect you tremendously in a psychological way. In the sense that you have no friends, that nobody talks to you, and that can make you have bad thoughts like committing suicide. So you need a lot of support.

Marisa Wojcik:
Abbotsford has had no choice but to find creative solutions to an ever growing need in the district.

Anne Chapman:
This is a statewide issue because of the way we fund it in Wisconsin with this reimbursement method way below 100%. This is effecting overall school budgets all over the state. This is pulling — this is what some might call an unfunded mandate ’cause these school districts are required to identify, monitor and serve these kids.

Marisa Wojcik:
Districts across the state are already struggling to find good teachers applying for open positions. For Abbotsford, it’s further complicated by their location.

Cheryl Baker:
Rural schools are not in the same competition zone as the bigger cities because that’s what’s drawing our youth today.

Marisa Wojcik:
And their need for bilingual teachers.

Georgia Kraus:
We have also had to reach out and hire someone from another country to come in and teach for us.

Sheila Briggs:
If they’re not getting additional funding, districts have the authority to look at their entire budget and determine what to fund and how to support all of their students in the best way possible.

Marisa Wojcik:
In years past DPI has requested additional funding for bilingual bicultural programming and it hasn’t made the cut.

Sheila Briggs:
We are severely underfunded in supporting the language learners that we have in the state.

Marisa Wojcik:
In his first state budget proposal, Governor Tony Evers has proposed an additional $44 million for English language learners.

Georgia Kraus:
I think it’s always a concern. Not knowing the bilingual funding and how much that might be. It could evaporate tomorrow.

Marisa Wojcik:
Markers for academic achievement show Wisconsin English learners are way behind. Only 17% of third grade ELs are proficient in reading. And only 4% of eight grader are proficient in math.

Sheila Briggs:
All students should be supported to be able to achieve on an individual level and not have their achievement be predictive based on any group that they belong to.

Marisa Wojcik:
Experts say that without proper funding for these programs, English learners are going to continue to fall behind. But these students still see learning English as an opportunity.

Translator for Gilda Bay Agredar:
[speaking Spanish] I am from Guatemala. They discriminate against the people that don’t have resources or the possibilities to study.

Translator for Karla De a Cruz Moreno:
[speaking Spanish] You come here, get a job, you get money and you get a better life. Different from the one in your country.

Marisa Wojcik:
Reporting from Abbotsford and Green Bay, I’m Marisa Wojcik.