Winston Salem Times

Students at Winston-Forsyth County schools who are not native English speakers are getting a boost as Open Arms Community is reaching out to improve English Language Learning (ELL) for them.

Julie Wilson, executive director of Open Arms Community, says the group is committed to the educational success of Spanish-speaking students.

“The reality of children here in Forsyth County faced with limited ELL resources I know we can do much better by these students,” Wilson said in a WFMY report.

The agency’s primary mission is to share the love, hope and joy of Christ by offering programs on-site to mitigate poverty, low educational achievement, substance abuse and societal prejudice against marginalized people and groups.

Efforts by Open Arms and other groups are welcome, Superintendent Tricia McManus said.

“Thank you, the Latino Congress, for lifting concerns and issues and suggestions that can allow us to work better with our Latino students,” McManus said, referring to the fact that the North Carolina Congress of Latino Organizations spoke to a group of Latin families to talk about their joint efforts to remove language barriers in the 2022 school year.

“We have a lot of work to do but I'm excited to talk about progress today,” McManus said.

McManus discussed some of the plans and how they will work.

All elementary school front offices will have family support assistants for Spanish-speaking families.

Faithaction IDs are now available to all families who don’t have documentation. There are plans for a newcomer center to help recently arrived Latino families. The district is looking to sponsor visas for international teachers to come to teach in their schools.

Bilingual educators have been hired and they have partnered with new bilingual organizations.

“We hired nine people on Aug. 9 on the spot for different positions,” McManus said, “and 17 employees to be family support assistants."

The district enrollment figures show that 29% of WS/FCS students are Hispanic, while just 4% of teachers are. ”Our goal is to mirror our student population which means we will not rest and we will be aggressive until 29 % of our workforce are Latino Spanish speakers,” McManus said.

Elsewhere in the Triad, 29% of Alamance Burlington students are Hispanic, 17% of Guilford County school students, and 12% of Davidson County students. Parents have long seen a need for more outreach.

“Right now I’m trying to support my friend she doesn’t speak much English she understands more than she speaks so I have been trying to help her with all this,” Karolni Jimenez, the mother of a second grader, said. "Definitely more personnel involved in the school… not because we are special, but we need the Latino community to be involved in schools."