Young English Learners A Rising Tide in Suburbs

Parents do not show up at Highland Elementary School merely to drop off students.

On a recent morning, one mother arrived seeking help in filling out a job application. Another needed a Spanish speaker for a teacher conference about missed homework. Someone else wanted to know how to get health insurance for her son. Twenty parents waited in the computer lab for a class that would cover little more than how to turn the machines on and off.

This year, for the first time, more than half the students at the Silver Spring school spoke limited English. It's a milestone for the school and for the Montgomery County school system, where the term "English language learners" was seldom heard before the middle of the last decade.

The population of students learning English is rising briskly in school systems in the Washington suburbs. Elementary school students with limited English proficiency (LEP) now number 20,000 in Fairfax, 10,000 in Montgomery, 9,000 in Prince William and 8,000 in Prince George's counties. Just seven years ago, those four counties accounted for 23,000 elementary-grade LEP students.

These newest LEP students are largely U.S. citizens, born within a few miles of their school but raised in homes where English is not spoken.

"You don't need English here to go to the bank or to go to the Giant," said Principal Raymond Myrtle, whose school sits near the multicultural mecca of downtown Wheaton.

To serve a population of English learners that has quadrupled in eight years, Myrtle and his staff at Highland have transformed a sleepy neighborhood school into a bustling hub of civic life, with weekend soccer tournaments, evening English classes, after-school tutoring and an ensemble of school-based community services such as housing assistance and mental health counseling. In the neighborhood bounded by Veirs Mill and Randolph roads and Connecticut and Georgia avenues, there is no more popular destination than the school.

"Where do you put the floppy? Remember?" asked Claudia Silva, the Salvadoran-born parent community coordinator, leading 20 parents in a computer class on a recent morning. "Look for a symbol of a W that stands for Word."

Silva is one of eight Spanish-speaking staff members at Highland Elementary. She is a beacon to hundreds of parents from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and other Central and South American nations.

More than three-quarters of Highland families qualify for subsidized meals. Within the immigrant population, fathers typically work in construction or landscaping; mothers work as nannies or at restaurants or stay home with their children. Families sometimes live three or four to a home. Rent in the area starts at $300 for a room, $600 to $800 for a basement. Almost no one in the immigrant community receives welfare, according to social workers and others at the school who serve the foreign-born.

Housing is cheaper in Adelphi and Hyattsville, Prince George's suburbs with similar concentrations of Latin American immigrants. But crime seems to be getting worse in those communities, parents say, while the neighborhood around Highland seems to be getting better. Parents say they feel safe leaving children outdoors. School leaders say it's been a long time since they have seen gang slogans on student notebooks.

Parents pay higher rents to have access to what they believe is a superior school.