School board sub-committee gets update on English Language Learners

MANCHESTER, NH – Manchester Board of School Committee Teaching and Learning Committee last week received a positive report on the state of the Manchester School District’s English Language Learners.

Consisting of public-school students in the city who do not speak English as a native language, English Language Learners (also known as Multilingual Learners) make up approximately 20 percent of all students in the Manchester School District, with the district holding approximately 40 percent of the English Language Learners across the state.

Those students speak 57 different languages, although 92 percent of them speak either Spanish, Swahili, Portuguese, Arabic, Vietnamese, Somali, French, Nepali, Bosnian or Kinyarwanda as a native language, with over half speaking Spanish.

Wendy Perron, the Manchester School District’s executive director of English Learner Instruction and Equity, said that there is an expectation from the state that English Language Learners can gain enough fluency to move out of specialized English Language Learner programs within five years. However, this is problematic for older students who may not have five years of schooling left before high school graduation.

Perron also provided related presentations highlighting 11 multilingual liaisons helping families of Manchester public school students with limited English proficiency as well as the “Family Villages” program, an initiative in collaboration with the New Hampshire Statewide Family Engagement Center that seeks to build a support network of families with English Language Learner students to augment their educational experience.

Ward 3 Board of School Committee Member Karen Soule said that English Language Learner programs in the district have advanced significantly in the last six years.

“All of our students deserve what they need to be successful, and it takes different ways to get there,” said Soule.