This story comes from Sahan Journal thanks to a partnership with MPR News.
Elizabeth Ledesma-Fernandez knew it might not be easy for her 3-year-old son, Leo, at the school where she teaches. The Emerson Dual Language School, which immerses elementary students in Spanish and English, has more than 20 youth on its kindergarten waiting list.
But now, Emerson is about to waste one of his 4 kindergarten classes. Ledesma-Fernandez fears that this Leo will have even fewer opportunities to sign up.
Emerson Preschool is one of seven elementary classrooms that Minneapolis Public Schools has proposed removing from its bilingual Spanish-language curriculum because it is grappling with a $110 million deficit.
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These discounts come at a time when enrollment of Spanish-speaking students in the district is increasing. More than 2,500 new students whose first language is Spanish were enrolled in the district between January 2023 and January 2024, according to district officials. Many of them are new inmigrantes. de Ecuador, but also from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico and Colombia.
Ledesma-Fernandez says she perceives the need for budget cuts. His own position has been eliminated, though he hopes to remain at Emerson in some other capacity. But he doesn’t understand why such a program, if requested, would miss a kindergarten class.
“Why are we like there are no customers?” She asked.
Much of the district’s deficit is due to the end of federal COVID-19 relief. But district officials also say that after years of delaying painful decisions, this budget represents a verification of the truth. Although Minneapolis Public Schools has space to accommodate 40,000 students, it now accommodates just under 30,000. Still, the district hasn’t reduced the length of its operations. Officials have reported that school closures and consolidations could occur before the start of the 2025-2026 school year.
But parents at popular bilingual Spanish immersion schools worry that budget cuts will hurt a program that attracts students to the district.
The district cited declining enrollment as one of the reasons for its currency crisis. However, enrollment is a challenge in bilingual schools. More than 250 students are waitlisted at 3 Minneapolis bilingual elementary schools because the systems are full, according to the school. knowledge of the district received through Colectiva Bilingüe, a parent-teacher organization that advocates for bilingual schools. The Star Tribune reported last year that Emerson is the only school in the district where the number of students exceeds the building’s capacity. Still, Emerson faces cuts of $1. 6 million, or 23% of the school’s total budget.
“Our budget will continue to be processed and nothing will be final until the school board votes in June,” Minneapolis Public Schools said in a statement to the Sahan Journal. “We are proposing an increase in elegance sizes at the primary level. This means that fewer study rooms will provide space for the same total number of students. The cuts come with the elimination of 8 fancy kindergartens across the district, he said.
In Emerson, capacity issues played a role in solving a kindergarten class, the district said.
“Emerson has had to go through a kindergarten to better cope with overcrowding and monetary constraints,” the district said in a statement.
In addition to the cuts, the district said it also introduced 24 new English teachers “to the influx of local Spanish-speaking students. “
Still, teachers and parents say that when those newcomers are able to access bilingual schools (which is rare due to high demand) they take advantage of the ability to speak Spanish while learning English. In other schools, they would possibly have only one member who can perceive them.
“To me it’s linguistic oppression,” said Molly Dengler, Emerson’s relative and co-president of the Bilingual Collective. “For all those families, not being able to grow up in a culturally appropriate environment, and not even knowing that it exists. “Because our schools are full and no one needs to announce it right now, it’s a huge loss. “
Given all those factors, Ledesma-Fernandez said, why treat bilinguals like anyone else?
“I don’t think it shows us as a whole,” he said. “There’s something else here. “
In total, the district has proposed eliminating seven elementary study rooms from its Spanish-language dual language immersion schools. Four study rooms will be eliminated at Emerson, while 3 will be removed at Green Central. Parents say those elementary study rooms, especially the one at Emerson kindergarten, are critical times when students can have interaction in the bilingual pathway.
At a school board finance committee meeting Tuesday night, Chief Financial Officer Ibrahima Diop explained that as part of the district’s strategy to make budget cuts fair, class sizes will not increase in schools where more than 70 percent of students are eligible for flexible benefits. or reduced admission. Price of lunch. This means that the number of study rooms will remain the same at Las Estrellas Bilingual School. But teachers and parents are concerned about the effects those cuts will have on stability.
And Andersen United Middle School and Roosevelt High School, as well as schools, are expected to lose their bilingual coordinators. Instead, the district plans to have a central coordinator for the bilingual Spanish-language program.
Jose Agustin Mejia, an employee at Green Central Elementary School, whose children also attend the school, is concerned about students’ educational enjoyment next year, with so many cuts. Green Central faces cuts of $1. 5 million, or about 19% of the overall budget. The school is on the verge of losing elegance in first, second, and 3rd grade, as well as all interventionists like Mejia.
Without interventionists, Mejia said, more time will be spent focusing on students’ express behavior.
“As a parent, I’m worried because young people will have fewer opportunities to learn,” he said in Spanish.
But she’s also concerned about restricting opportunities for Spanish-speaking families and staff. She has a lot of friends who don’t attend Minneapolis Public Schools because they couldn’t get a spot in the bilingual program, she said. And he also knows a lot of staff members who have gone to other neighborhoods. This represents “an exodus from the Latin American community,” he said.
Amy Gustafson, whose children attend the bilingual curriculum at Andersen and Roosevelt, and who has worked as a substitute instructor at both schools, said the loss of language coordinators at the high school would make the instructors’ jobs much more difficult. create Spanish-language systems, acclimate instructors new to the country, and cater to students.
“I think there’s going to be bigger classes, there’s going to be less or even time for instructors to do all that extra preparation, there’s going to be less consistency in training one instructor compared to another,” Gustafson said. “It’s just more Wild West. “
At Estrellas, the number of study rooms will remain the same, said Sara Van Hoy, who teaches English to fourth-graders there.
But many teachers at Las Estrellas have what the state considers transient licenses. These teachers were told they would be “surplus,” meaning they would be fired. Their positions will be open to teachers with a permanent license; Then, if the district fails to complete them, it will be able to reopen them with transitory authorization.
According to a petition circulated among school staff, a glut of teachers on temporary furloughs would mean cutting off more than 60% of all teachers at Las Estrellas. And while the budget may not be final until the school board votes in June, teachers would likely have to make decisions about their jobs before then.
“What we’re looking for is consistency and stability for our kids,” Van Hoy said. State knowledge shows that 3 out of 4 youth in Las Estrellas are Hispanic or Latino. That number includes several dozen students who are new to the country, he said. .
Some at bilingual immersion schools have visas to paint and are concerned about the instability of their positions, said Ambrosio Diaz, a fifth-grade instructor at Las Estrellas.
“I don’t know why. . . it’s happening,” Diaz said. Why does the district do this when it’s short on teachers?
Priscila Quinde, a Las Estrellas parent who leads the school’s Ecuadorian affinity group, said the proposed discounts at her school come with a staff member who is helping parents with virtual platforms. Without such staff, teachers and parents will have a greater duty to children. she said.
The fourth-grader from Quinde previously attended school in Port Chester, New York. He recalled that in this school system, there were four adults in each class: two who spoke English and two who spoke Spanish. Removing the staff would make it difficult for “everyone interested, even academics who are learning at different rates and have other needs,” he said.
“At the end of the day, the effect will be felt in the children,” he said in Spanish.
Colectiva Bilingüe, which brings together parents and teachers from all five schools in the bilingual program, created as a result of the 2020 Minneapolis Public School Redistricting Plan. At the time, one school’s bilingual program had closed its doors and several schools were only studying Spanish. The rooms had been removed.
When Minneapolis Public Schools announced budget cuts this month, it reminded some parents of their struggle four years earlier.
At a bilingual assembly with parents and staff from the five schools on March 9, school board members Adriana Cerrillo and Kim Ellison spoke in favor of the systems and said the board had not made a final decision.
Deputy Superintendent Yusuf Abdullah highlighted how complicated the budget procedure had been.
“We don’t take a resolution lightly,” he said. He explained that with cuts in the budget line item for hiring bilingual coordinators, the district may simply not hire one at every site.
“We hope to continue to have some foothold, that things are going to be very different,” he said.
He explained that the classroom assignments in each grade were decided by enrollment and dropout calculations. Still, he said, he was discussing with the employment bureau the option of restoring a fourth kindergarten in Emerson.
“I just can’t assure you that that’s going to happen,” he said. “But it will be our efforts, knowing that we don’t need to exhaust our DL [bilingual] program. We need it to thrive.
Cerrillo had a long relationship with Emerson, whom his nephew frequented. But in a phone interview Tuesday, he told the Sahan Journal that the overall budget represented a state of emergency and that he might simply not participate in the double-dip program to get help. He said the network wants to lobby Gov. Tim Walz and the federal government to step in and help.
“I can’t just protect one program or another,” he said, pointing to significant budget cuts at North Side schools. “Our network at Emerson is a pretty healthy network. Our network will be fine. This is not the case in other communities.
There may simply not be a solution without increased investment from the state and federal governments, he said, and without a solution, he was concerned about the well-being of Minneapolis’ children.
“It’s going to take community, sacrifice and also courage,” Cerrillo said.
Ledesma-Fernandez also has a high school student and a first-year student from a previous marriage. They attended schools in South Washington County, in the family’s district. When they were younger, they attended a school where they took Spanish categories once a week. But that wasn’t enough for them to learn the language, even though she spoke it to them at home, Ledesma-Fernandez said.
“My children are far from bilingual,” she says. I don’t need to repeat the same story with Leo. “
Her seventh-grader daughter is proud of her Mexican heritage; she is “obsessed” with the concept of listening to Spanish music and seeks to attend Mexican parties, Ledesma-Fernandez said. But she doesn’t feel comfortable traveling to Mexico because she’s fluent in Spanish.
“She’s intimidated to communicate with someone who speaks Spanish because she thinks they’re going to laugh at her,” Ledesma-Fernandez said. On the other hand, he said, young people are more comfortable making mistakes when they’re learning.
She sees a narrow window for Leo to expand a lifelong connection to her heritage, language, and culture. But he fears Minneapolis Public Schools will close that window of opportunity.
“That’s what’s scary,” he says. When will you know who will be bilingual and who won’t?”