Trending
The Dunkirk school district's English Language Learner (ELL) programs were touted by its administrators during a Board of Education workshop.
The school district is required to provide the programming for each grade level with 20 or more ELLs. In Dunkirk, every grade from kindergarten to grade eight has at least 20 ELLs, according to data presented at the workshop.
The school district had 1,957 students in 2021-22, the last year statistics are available for, according to the New York State Education Department. Some 372 students are considered ELLs.
Overall, the district has 1,120 kids who identify as Hispanic or Latino, composing 57% of the student population. A total of 1,448 students, or 74%, are considered "economically disadvantaged."
Corinna Hooge, director of special programs, said at the board workshop, "There's a process to identify (children for ELL programs). When any parent registers their student, they fill out a home language questionnaire, which I screen. From there, one of the ELL teachers does an interview with the student to determine the level of English they have verbally and in writing."
ELLs can enter an English as a New Language (ENL) program or bilingual education modules. ENL is all in English; bilingual education was offered for the first time last school year in the Dunkirk district.
"The first question we got from parents (about bilingual education) who were interested was, 'Will they learn enough English?'" Hooge said. That led the district to do a 50-50 split between classes in English and Spanish.
She mentioned a U.S. Department of Education-funded study that showed kids who did bilingual education have higher English reading achievement levels than kids in a traditional ENL program or in no program at all.
In Dunkirk, according to kindergarten ELL teacher Kerry Hoffman, data showed low levels of English proficiency among her students as the 2022-23 school year opened - but it had surged by year's end.
"This is phenomenal data," she said. "We have never, in all our years, seen English language learners do that."
Their Spanish skills also improved, she added. "Spending that time in Spanish does translate into better learning in English," she said.