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Hispanics Now Largest Minority in Florida's Public Schools
This year, the number of Hispanic students in public schools statewide overtook the number of black children, making Hispanics the largest minority group. The difference is slim 3,621 students out of nearly 3 million students but the change is likely to be permanent because of a steady stream of immigrants and a healthy birth rate. Hispanic student enrollment rose by about 11 percent the past three years, or about 50,000 students, compared with a 1 percent rise in black students, or 6,000. The shift comes just three years after enrollment tipped from a white majority to a combination of other groups making up more than half of public schoolchildren. What this newest nuance means is unclear. At Palm Beach Central High in Wellington, recent graduate Jacqueline Romero said her Puerto Rican heritage had an influence on her reign as student body president. "I was able to connect with more people," she said. "I fit in a lot easier than my friends who were shy being around people of other races," even though when she speaks Spanish, she said, "I definitely sound very gringa." Education officials say the goals of teaching all children to read and write and calculate are still the same. But schools have had more than 50 years to get it right when it comes to teaching black students well, and some districts are still under federal government watch because they haven't gotten it right. Statewide, the achievement gap remains a chasm. While Hispanic students also lag behind their white peers, they outperform black students in most categories: As a whole they're more likely to pass the FCAT and graduate from high school. Many already speak English Perhaps tackling language and cultural differences is different than overcoming poverty and deep-rooted racism. Schools can take specific, concrete steps, and districts are required to accommodate foreign students and kids whose first language isn't English. Also, many Hispanic students don't need any help learning English, said Steve Byrne, assistant director of the Palm Beach County School District's multicultural education department. While about 40,000 Palm Beach County students are Hispanic, only about 10,000 are classified as needing help with their English. Hispanic students in the county range from political refugees who have been in the United States for just a few days to those of second- or third-generation families to students adopted from foreign countries who are Hispanic only on paper. Byrne's department was created soon after a 1990 federal order to ensure students learning English get proper access to public education. Now, letters to parents go home in Spanish, English and other languages. At schools where many kids speak Spanish, or any language besides English, they get a special teacher who speaks the same thing. Many teachers, including all language arts teachers, have to take extra college classes to help them work better with non-English speakers. The law isn't foolproof, though. It wasn't until last year that the court decree prompted the school district to stop using scores from the FCAT a test given only in English as a criterion for admission to some magnet programs. While changes like that have come slowly, others have come faster, such as hiring more bilingual employees. When Byrne started working for the district years ago, Palm Beach County had a single bilingual guidance counselor. Now there are 60. Byrne said he isn't daunted by the growing number of Hispanic children. "It's business as usual," he said. "We just continue doing what we're doing." That's not to say that what school districts are doing doesn't take tremendous effort. While Hispanic students now outnumber black children, their numbers aren't reflected in the state's teaching pool. Only 10 percent of teachers statewide are Hispanic. About 15 percent of the teaching force is black. Educating parents, too Every Hispanic teacher is a victory of sorts, said Raul Iribarren, a native of Cuba and principal of Palmetto Park Elementary in West Palm Beach. His school has the largest proportion of Hispanic students in the county. "If you are a fairly decent teacher who speaks Spanish, you have a tremendous market," Iribarren said. Teacher Gayle Zavala said she knows her presence makes a difference. Zavala, whose parents are from Mexico, teaches mentally disabled children at Gove Elementary in Belle Glade. She's also an on-the-fly translator for whomever stops her in the hall or office. She was inspired to teach after growing up near a hard-of-hearing uncle. They communicated through a jumble of English, Spanish and gestures, she said. "I have children come up to me and say, 'Are you Spanish? Are you Mexican?' They won't say Hispanic or Latin, but they connect that I am a minority like them," she said. "I think it's important that they see me and hopefully are inspired to continue to stay in school." At Gove, 61 percent of students are Hispanic. For parents of kids with disabilities, navigating the public school system is especially difficult. For parents who don't speak English, it can be impossible. Zavala recalled one parent, a widowed mother of a severely disabled girl who was from the Dominican Republic and worried about her daughter going on field trips. "I finally convinced her it was OK for her daughter to go on field trips with us, even though she was severely handicapped. She would be able to enjoy it," said Zavala, who used her Spanish to put the woman at ease. Eventually, the mother relented and even joined the trips a few times. "People ask, do your kids come back?" she said. "Do you feel proud of making somebody a great lawyer or a great doctor or this or that? That's not what life is necessarily about. It's what you can do with people in their everyday lives." At Palmetto, about 72 percent of Iribarren's students are Hispanic. "It's like a little United Nations here," he said. While students from Cuba dominate the group, there are also kids from Mexico, the Caribbean, Colombia and Argentina, to name a few. Of those, about three-fifths are still learning English. Many of his teachers are bilingual, and being able to greet families and students in their own tongue helps make them comfortable, Iribarren said. Bilingual teachers are familiar with the lessons the students might have learned in their home countries and that some of them are different than an American curriculum. The goal, however, is to steep them in English and persuade parents that their children must master their adopted country's language, but not at the expense of their own. Just two school buses bring students to his school, meaning most of his students live in the West Palm Beach neighborhood surrounding it, a community he called the Little Havana of Palm Beach County. Spanish is spoken at the nearby grocery stores and gas stations. "One of the dangers is people become complacent. It's the island mentality," Iribarren said. "It's a culture we're trying to impart to the parents: There's going to be a time when the kids are going to leave. They're going to move to Seattle. The kids need to learn the language." Martha Lebolo's four kids all speak English now maybe too much. The family came to the United States from Colombia six years ago, when oldest daughter Cherry was in second grade. She was the only one who wasn't enrolled in special classes for English learners when the family first arrived. Now, the three oldest kids come home from Don Estridge High Tech Middle in Boca Raton wearing flash drives portable computer memory around their necks instead of carrying notebooks. Cherry, 13, will be an eighth-grader there this year. She said she loves the mix of kids at Don Estridge, where about one in six of her classmates is Hispanic. But her mother says that more often than not, Cherry, seventh-grade twins Chabeli and Franco, and 9-year-old Luciano speak English, even with their Spanish-speaking friends. She asks that they speak Spanish at home. "They have to remember where they came from." |
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