US teachers face language barriers, pupil trauma as record migration reaches classrooms

Dana Smith had been teaching first grade at the public school in the small Pennsylvania town of Charleroi for more than 16 years when she found herself confronting a new challenge last year: a sharp rise in pupils from Haiti who did not speak English.

She started using a phone app to translate lessons, but the constant pauses for translation frustrated her. She wondered if she was hindering the learning of American students who knew some of the basics she was reviewing, a complaint raised by a vocal segment of parents in the district.

“It was very stressful,” she said. “We never know when we're going to get new ones coming in, where their levels are, how adjusted they are to this culture. The unexpected.”

More than 500,000 school age migrant children have arrived in the US since 2022, according to immigration court records collected by Syracuse University, exacerbating overcrowding in some classrooms, compounding teacher and budget shortfalls, forcing teachers to grapple with language barriers and inflaming social tensions in places unaccustomed to educating immigrant pupils.

To gauge the impact of immigration on state schools across the US, Reuters sent a survey to more than 10,000 school districts. Of the 75 school districts that responded, serving a total of 2.3-million children or about 5% of the public school population, a third said the increase in immigrant children had had a “significant” impact on their school district.

While not exhaustive, the Reuters' survey, the first by a media organisation, offers the most extensive view to date of how US state schools are grappling with record migrant arrivals across the southern border.

The responses spanned school districts across 23 states, from Texas to Alaska, and include the largest urban district of New York City as well as the tiny and rural Hot Springs Elementary School District in southern California, with only 16 pupils.

A total of 42 districts said they had hired more English as a second language (ESL) teachers and consultants, and 15 districts described difficulties communicating with parents or a lack of interpreter services.

“Textbooks are not in their language. Resources are not easily available. Google Translate does not work that great,” the Springfield City school district in Ohio said in its response to the survey conducted between late August and late September.

Republican candidate Donald Trump has made immigration a top talking point in the November 5 presidential election, blaming his Democratic opponent, Vice-President Kamala Harris, for record numbers of migrants illegally crossing the US-Mexico border during President Joe Biden’s administration.

Trump also faults Harris for a Biden programme launched in late 2022 that allowed legal entry to 530,000 Haitians and others with US sponsors. At a rally in Arizona last month, Trump used Charleroi, a town an hour south of Pittsburgh, as an example of the negative impacts of immigration.

About 2,000 immigrants, including about 700 Haitians, live in the tow, with many arriving in the past few years, according to Charleroi borough manager Joe Manning, swelling a population that declined from more than 11,000 a century ago to 4,200 in the 2020 census.

“Charleroi, what a beautiful name, but it's not so beautiful,” Trump told supporters. “The schools are scrambling to hire translators for the influx of students who don't speak a word of English, costing local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Washington County, where Charleroi is located, backed Trump over Biden in 2020 by 23 percentage points, symbolising a part of the rural vote that could help Trump win Pennsylvania, the most important of the election battleground states that could decide control of the White House.

Most Haitians arriving in the US since 2023 entered legally or are eligible to remain and seek work permits through the temporary protected status programme.

While Trump has derided a wide range of immigrant groups throughout his political career, he has taken particular aim at Haitians, questioning while president in 2018 why the US would accept Haitians and immigrants from "shithole countries" in Africa.

He thrust immigration to the forefront of a September 10 debate with Harris when he repeated a false rumour that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. State schools and other city buildings in Springfield received bomb threats after the debate.

Amy Nelson, an assistant principal in the Charleroi school district, said the school has not received direct threats, but she is concerned about anti-Haitian posts in a local Facebook group, including a repost of a purported Ku Klux Klan group describing Haitians in Springfield in derogatory terms and calling on Americans to “stand against forced immigration”.

In response to a Reuters request for comment about the effects of migration on schools, a campaign spokesperson pointed to Trump remarks at a September 23 rally in Pennsylvania.

“It takes centuries to build the unique character of each state,” Trump said at the time. “Reckless migration policy can change it very quickly.”

The Harris campaign touted $130bn (R2.2-trillion) directed to schools under Biden's 2021 economic stimulus package. Harris “will build on those investments and continue fighting until every student has the support and the resources they need to thrive”, Harris campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement to Reuters.

White House spokesperson Angelo Fernandez Hernandez said the Biden administration has increased funding to address teacher shortages and requested $50m (R873m) in new funding to support English language learning.

In the Reuters survey, 17 districts said they requested additional state funds to help immigrant pupils. A total of 12 of the districts reported receiving additional funds, including a district in New Jersey that said it wasn't enough to hire an ESL supervisor.

A total of 10 districts said their teachers were not well-trained or received no training to meet the needs of new immigrant pupils, and 42 said they would welcome more training for teachers and administrators. The training requests included how to teach children who don't speak English how to approach different cultural norms and how to help children recover from trauma.

“Any time you have an unpredictable pattern of pupil enrolment all at once, the strain it creates on the system is tremendous,” Denver public schools superintendent Alex Marrero wrote in his response.

Denver has seen a huge increase in migrant arrivals since 2023, in large part due to the state of Texas busing 19,200 people from the US-Mexico border to the Democratic-run city. In addition to the language barriers and differences in educational backgrounds, the jump in arrivals “required our system to stand up processes across the city to not only communicate with families but also support them in getting their basic needs met to have pupils coming to school ready to learn”, Marrero wrote.

However, 11 respondents said, unprompted , the newcomers had enriched the school community, bringing new perspectives and resilience that other children could learn from.

Signs of strain

On a rainy Wednesday morning at Charleroi High School, pupils shuffled between classes in small groups.

“Hello, my Haitian friends,” one American pupil said as when passed Haitian girls walking in the opposite direction.

Julnise Telorge, an 18-year-old from Haiti in her final year of high school, said she feels safe in Charleroi, despite a white student bumping into her in the hallway and making a derogatory comment last year.

Telorge said the comment upset her and she did not know why someone would say that. “I think because she doesn't like blacks,” she said.

School district officials said they were unaware of the incident.

The number of non-English speaking pupils in the 1,450-student Charleroi area school district shot up to 220 from 12 in the 2021-2022 school year, according to the district administrators. About 80% percent of the pupils are of Haitian descent, said superintendent Ed Zelich.

Like many of the Haitians arriving in Charleroi, the Telorge family were attracted by job openings at Fourth Street Foods, a plant packaging frozen breakfast foods near the school complex.

Telorge's father, Julis, works at the plant where he earns $15 (R262) an hour, he said. He is applying for asylum. About a third of the plant's 1,000 workers are Haitian, according to its owner Dave Barbe, who said that there are not enough Americans in the area to do the work.

The school district has hired five new staff members, including three teachers specialising in English for non-native speakers, as well as a part-time interpreter, Zelich said.

He estimated the cost at $400,000 (R6.9m) a year, a fraction of the district's $30.7m (R536m) budget, but a cost the district has covered while it waits for possible reimbursement by the state.

There are additional costs. After parents of 37 children pulled their children out of the school district this year to send them to the local charter school, the district was legally required to pay an additional $500,000 (R8.7m) for transportation and the higher charter school tuition, Zelich said.

Beth Pellegrini, who attended Charleroi state schools as a child and served on the parent teacher association, said she decided this year to send her three children to the charter school in part because teachers were too busy trying to communicate with non-English speaking pupils to give them enough attention.

Her seven-year-old daughter was struggling with maths while her sons, who are older, have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

“My children were all falling behind,” Pellegrini said. “It wasn't only the immigrants, but it felt like the teachers didn't have the time to dedicate to them.”

Joseph Gudac, the Charleroi school district business manager, said he expected the local school tax there would need to increase if the number of non-English speaking pupils keeps rising.

Making progress

The new dynamic in some American classrooms has challenged teachers to adapt, but it hasn't been without strains.

In the US, all children, regardless of their immigration status, have a right to free public education. But the federal government pays for only a small fraction of newcomer educational services.

Smith, the Charleroi first grade teacher, workshopped ideas with her colleagues on how to cope. She paired Haitian pupils with more advanced English skills with beginners, she said. She used more physical cues, pointing to get pupils to sit in their seats.

She incorporated repetition into her lessons, particularly around language. Yet when the school offered to pay for teacher training, Smith did not want to take on another work assignment on top of her day job.

“That's one more thing I have on my plate that I would rather not have,” she said, adding she planned to retire in a few years. They should be wanting to learn our language, learn our culture.”

Despite the challenges, Smith said the situation has improved. While she has six English language pupils out of 17 students in her classroom this year, they all attended kindergarten at the school and have a good working knowledge of the language.

During a class last month, she started the day with basics: roll call, sharpening pencils, reviewing the days of the week, and the pledge of allegiance to the American flag in the back corner of her colourful classroom.

The pupils followed the lesson and responded to cues.

“They have already had a year under their belt,” she said, “so I can see their progression has made a big difference.”

One Haitian girl in Smith's class went from speaking no English when she entered school last year to receiving an award for academic excellence, according to Nelson, the assistant principal. The girl's mother died of breast cancer last year and Nelson and her husband are trying to adopt her.

“She is so resilient,” Nelson said.

Hopes for the future

When Haitian pupils at Charleroi's high school need to talk to a teacher, they often go to Bridget DeFazio.

DeFazio, 40, started teaching French at the school in 2008. Her language skills suddenly became more sought after as dozens of Haitians, many of whom understood or spoke French, enrolled in the middle school and high school. DeFazio and another teacher paid for an ESL certification last year and she  teaches ESL classes in addition to French.

“It has been challenging, but for me, a good challenge,” she said. “I've been here for 17 years so it was almost like a breath of fresh air for me, something new I can try.”

When pupils walked into her ESL class last week, she greeted them in Haitian Creole. The 10 pupils in her class took notes and answered questions when she ran through adjectives — smart, dumb, funny, happy, sad, shy — in a booming voice that filled the room.

“I've never seen children more eager to learn,” DeFazio said. “At the end of the day, they are teenagers. They're going to get into trouble, they're going to be late for class, they're going to test the limits. But when I pull them aside and talk to them, it's, 'OK, madame, we get it'.”

Reuters