Tuesday, April 10, 2018 | 4:04 p.m.
RENO — Washoe County school students still trying to learn English could suffer the biggest brunt of tentative spending cuts the school board is considering.
The Reno Gazette Journal reports the single-largest line item cut recommended this year — about $680,000 of the more than $4 million proposed — would eliminate 10 teaching positions in the English-language program.
If the proposed cuts are approved, the district's program will ultimately have lost 24 teachers over two consecutive years of budget cuts.
Board member Veronica Frenkel is among those who oppose staff cuts in the program. She had to learn English as a student at the age of six when her family moved to the U.S. from Chile.
"I believe that we should be increasing our investment in these students, particularly the (English-language) students because they are among the lowest-performing students in our district," Frenkel told the newspaper.
The school board was expected to review a tentative budget on Tuesday. But final action won't come until June.
Chief Academic Officer Debra Biersdorf said the new version of the program will focus more resources on training average classroom teachers to work with students learning English. A "facilitator" assigned to as may as three campuses will work with teachers, students and be responsible for in-classroom coaching.
The program will be more inclusive by keeping students still learning English in their normal classrooms, she said. But also, it's a plan to cope with the growing number of students in the program each year. The number of students learning English is growing statewide. This school year, more than a third of Washoe County's students were in the program.
"As our numbers continue to grow . we don't have the luxury, we don't have the means, to keep adding (English-language) teachers," Biersdorf said, adding that the specially certified English-language teachers are hard to find.
"Sure, I am concerned about putting more and more on the shoulders of our teachers . but these (English-language) students already are in the classrooms with our teachers and we are a district that very much believes in inclusive education," Biersdorf said. "We want these students to be in the classroom with their grade-level peers."
Other critics include Alejandra Hernández Chávez, 24, a graduate of Sparks High School and a product of Washoe County's English-language program.
"To hear there is going to be such a cut is devastating," said Chavez, who immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico in 1999 and came to Reno in 2000. She now works for ACTIONN, a Northern Nevada-based social justice organization. "The only way I was able to thrive in life and in the future with my education was because I had a good basis of the language."
