Brenda Russ, Chesterfield County Schools’ ESL coordinator, oversees a program that works with 15 percent of the student population. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
On Aug. 21, two weeks before thousands of K-12 students were set to stream into Richmond Public Schools, interim Superintendent Thomas Kranz gave the School Board an alarming number: there were 115 teacher vacancies yet to fill.
“[Human resources] is making offers literally every single day, so we expect that number to continue to dwindle,” Kranz said optimistically.
Vacant positions from last year increased, he said, partly because the total number of teachers needed went up by 10 — primarily to accommodate the increasing English language learning students in South Side.
As of Aug. 15, Richmond Public Schools had 2,581 students — more than 10 percent of its students — who need help with the English language before they can in earnest study math, history, science and other subjects. Such percentages are climbing regionally and across the state.
English language learners need instruction from teachers licensed in teaching English as a second language (ESL) — with an eye toward returning students to their regular classroom and in hopes of on-time graduation.
It’s a specialty in high demand.
Since 2003, when the Virginia Department of Education started publishing a top 10 list of “critical shortage teaching areas” in the commonwealth, prekindergarten through 12th grade ESL teachers has made the list seven times.
Illustration by Carson McNamara
And don’t be fooled by the years it’s not on the top 10, says Julie Grimes, communications manager for the department. “The numbers of ESL students aren’t going down.”
The supply adjustment can’t come soon enough for English learners and their parents.
“Having ESL teachers is so important for [students] to attain proficiency and meet state standards just like any native speaker, says Lynn Sodat, director of the office of program administration and accountability for the department.
Filling that role requires a separate certification, says Mark Pasier, interim human resources director for Richmond Public Schools. To teach ESL in Virginia, one must graduate from an approved teacher preparation program in ESL or complete 24 semester hours of coursework in topics like English linguistics, cross-cultural education and a foreign language.
In recent years, the state Department of Education has begun working with a number of colleges in Virginia, like the University of Richmond, to get teachers and aspiring teachers the coursework they need for ESL teaching — often at no cost to the teachers.
In Chesterfield County, during the same week as Kranz’s update, Brenda Russ, the public schools’ ESL coordinator, was holding a three-day training session for their ESL teachers new to English language instruction or to Chesterfield County Public Schools. All 93 of Chesterfield’s full-time ESL teachers go through the training. The number of the county’s English language learning students has grown by approximately 2,000 in the past 10 years to 15 percent of the student population.
Russ reports that the county is fully staffed for the coming school year, but demand continues to climb.
Federal civil rights law mandates English learning instruction, but funding is a state and local burden. The Virginia state lottery funds some ESL programming — $1.2 million worth in Richmond’s FY18 budget. Local funds come close to matching that amount ($1.1 million.) And the federal government provides about another $130,000 through a Title III grant.
Kat Billingham, Chesterfield County’s English for Speakers of Other Languages coordinator for adult classes, has some insight into the challenges her counterparts in K-12 education face: Enrollment numbers can fluctuate significantly from year-to-year, sometimes depending on the job market.
“For example, remember in 2008 and 2009 when the economy crashed,” she says. “There were less construction jobs. That was a time when [adult] student numbers dropped.”
In addition to a solid pipeline of ESL teacher supply, nimble hiring practices are key.
Lynn Sodat says that, despite pre-classroom assessments of new students, a school might not know exactly how many English language learners it has enrolled until the school year starts.
And the proficiency of the students also varies. Students learn more quickly at a young age, says Judy Radford, the Virginia Department of Education’s ESL professional development coordinator, while a 14-year-old joining the school with no English language skills will take longer to catch up.
Other administrators cite global conflicts that can bring refugees to a locality in large numbers at once. In Chesterfield County, for example, the top five languages reflect regions marked by instability: Spanish, Arabic, Vietnamese, Chinese-Mandarin and Khmer-Cambodian.
