As we celebrate the early immigrants to North America, let’s consider the story of immigrants today. Reporting for AL.com, Rebecca Griesbach tells the story of districts dealing with immigration, and the efforts of public schools to make sure that all students get “what they deserve.”
On a Halloween afternoon at Albertville Primary School, a group of seven students, some newly arrived in the United States, looked on as their teacher displayed a spooky story on the projector.
A boy looked up at interpreter Melisa Santiago as she explained a scene to him in Spanish. Then Melissa Murry, who is new to the district’s English learner classrooms this year, repeated a question to the group in Haitian Creole.
Santiago and Murry, called “Melisa 1 and Melissa 2” by the kids, are both Albertville City Schools graduates who returned to work in local schools in North Alabama.
“That’s one of our major blessings this year,” English learner teacher Dusty Royster said as she looked at Murry, an aide who started working in EL classrooms this fall.
The teachers are among a crew of educators who are working to support a growing population of new English learners at the school, and across the state. Sixteen school districts now count more than 10% of students as English learners, AL.com found.
Murry came to Albertville from Florida as a high schooler in 1999. Her family was among the few Haitian immigrants living in the town at the time. A few migrants from Mexico and Guatemala had also begun to settle in the community.
Now the Alabama city of about 23,000 has one of the largest foreign-born populations in the state. Many work in local chicken processing plants.
As immigrants move to the area, many enroll children, who may be American citizens or immigrants themselves, in local schools. This fall, 37% of Albertville students are enrolled in EL programs – up from 17% in 2018, according to district officials. More than half of students speak a language other than English at home.
