In a historical lawsuit that looks to obtain more state funds for New York City schools brought by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a group of immigrant students who don’t speak English have been neglected.
That is the opinion of several education experts. Even though they support the idea of getting more money for schools, they fear that this money won’t adequately benefit the students who arrive at the classrooms in New York without knowing English.
The problem lies in the formula used by the government to distribute money to schools, driven by the necessity of the students.
In court, part of the lawsuit addresses how much money should be assigned to the special-needs student population. The government assigns numerical values to these groups of students, and these values determine the amount of money that should be spent on them.
A student without special needs receives a value of one; a student in special education can receive a value of two, indicating that he or she should receive double the financial resources.
Under the guidelines utilized by the state government, a student who needs to learn English receives a value of 1.2 or an investment of 20 percent above that made for each student – close to $11,000.
As a result of the lawsuit, up until now it has been determined to preserve this numerical value for the students who don’t speak English.
In other words, as far as the students who need to learn the language, nothing has changed. “This has been happening for years,” observed Luis O. Reyes, former member of the Board of Education and now researcher at the Bronx Institute at Lehman College. The litigants of the campaign for Fiscal Equality “did not do anything new to confront the needs” of the students that don’t speak English, added Reyes.
“Everyone agrees” that the increase cost in the educating of a student who doesn’t speak English is much higher than 20 percent more than what it costs to educate a regular student, said Jose Davila, legislative coordinator at the New York Immigration Coalition. In other states where this issue been discussed, Davila indicates, nearly twice as many funds have been assigned to immigrant students. The value of 1.2 “is definitively on the low side,” he added.
Attorney Michael Rebell, who argued the case for the Campaign for Fiscal Equality and until recently was director of the campaign, said he was aware of the complaints among the activists from the Hispanic community about the proposed allotment of resources for the students who don’t speak English.
“We had expert consultants,” said Rebell, “and those were the numbers that they calculated.” But he added, “this is a complex topic” and those students will benefit from other aspects of the lawsuit. For example, additional funds were assigned to low-income students, a category which characterizes most immigrant students. In addition, the lawsuit recommends that the number of students per class be reduced, which would have a “tremendous” benefit for all, including those who don’t know English, said Rebell.
Immigrant students have less power
For Reyes, immigrant students still don’t receive the attention that they need and deserve.
“What they need is more time: Saturday classes, summer school, after-school classes, a longer day” Reyes declared. They also need more time in the education system in general because for “the kid who arrived late to the system, it’s almost impossible” to finish school in four years, pointed out Reyes. Besides, they need specialized teachers that according to the Department of Education are scarce.
And in order to graduate, these students have to pass the Board of Regents exams like everybody else.
“A child who comes from Puebla, Mexico, or Santo Domingo, or China and enters the ninth grade, many times has not received the same education in their country due to economic, political or war problems,” says Reyes. “They arrive here and demand a diploma, that they need to pass the Regents exam in English.”
If a student requires a longer day and more time in school, “all of that costs money,” says Reyes. And money is precisely what this large lawsuit from the Campaign for Fiscal Equality is dealing with.
Reyes and Davila indicated that the same problem of not assigning enough to the students who don’t speak English is being addressed in other forums focused on the management of funds for city schools.
Davila also pointed to legislation presented by Assemblyman Steve Sanders (D-NY) to the State Legislature, and supported by the Campaign, which also overlooks the students who don’t speak English.
And in the city, even when the City Council has a special commission to reevaluate the topics discussed in this lawsuit, upon publishing their first report his summer this commission ignored the issue of the students that don’t speak English, said Reyes. The report spoke about “the necessity to professionally develop the teachers curriculum” and the retention of professors, commented the educator. “I said, all that is good, but in the report there’s nothing of substance about a group of young people who form a large part of the schools, they are the immigrant children and the children that don’t speak English”, he added.
