Agenda - 03-31-1999 - 1a - Laserfiche WebLink

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INTRODUCTION Chapel Hill - Carrboro City Schools is committed to ensuring a free and appropriate public education for all students, including language minority or Limited English Proficient (LEP) students who bring rich cultural and linguistic resources to the community, and to giving these students equal access to appropriate educational services. The purpose of this report is to share information about the-review of present educational services for LEP students and present findings and recommendations of the 31- member Task Force, established by members of the Board of Education in August, 199e. BACKGROUND INFORMATION Researchers and educators across the country agree that the key to success for schools with large numbers of Limited English Proficient students, in addition to teaching them English, is to respect and value the language and culture that these students bring to schools. Maintenance of minority languages and cultures as well as the sharing of them with the language majority students is crucial for the success of language minority students. As our community experiences globalization in business and communication, our next generation faces an increasing need for developing cultural understanding and cross - cultural communication skills. Language minority or LEP students, provide the language majority group with excellent opportunities for developing cross- cultural awareness. Often, LEP students are viewed as having a 'language problem' that needs to be fixed. While LEP students do have specific educational needs; many of them do not have linguistic, cognitive, academic and cultural 'deficits.' They are simply adding competencies in the new language and culture to their existing abilities in their native language and culture. Therefore, teaching English As A Second Language ( ESL) to these students is enrichment and additive in nature rather than remedial and subtractive. Over the past ten yearn or more, the Limited English Proficlent (LEP) student population has increased tremendously in the Chapel Hill- CCarrboro City Schools and across North Carolina. LEP students moving into the schools experience a cultural shock as they are faced with a new and unreadable language, new faces, different value systems, different historical heritage, and a strange environment. Many experience frustrations as they attempt to adjust to their new environment and loam how to survive within the school culture. The Chapel Hill- Carrboro City School System began serving LEP students district -wide in 1987 with one teacher working with 67 students. Prior to this district -wide effort to meet the needs of LEP students, the school system contracted with Dialogo, an educational consulting service for non - English speaking students, to serve high school LEP students only. Durham Technical Community College, through a three -year grant, also provided additional class periods of English as a Second Language (ESL) services at the high school level. Presently, there are eight ESL teachers serving about 320 LEP students and meeting the growing and diverse needs of the system's LEP student population.