One Alabama school system responds to rise in immigration: ‘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.

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.

"When I got here, I would have never thought that," Murry said. "But it's grown so much, and I do feel like Albertville has a lot of opportunities for foreigners. It's a great place to start and build."

In 1998, just 1.2% of the state's students were English learners. In the 2022-23 school year, about 41,000 of the state's 750,000 students, or 5.5%, were English learners.

Experts say that school-wide English language support – not just interventions – can be critical not only for the academic success and language development of young English learners, but also for adults and other peers. Over the years, Albertville has used much of its available funding to hire bilingual and EL staff.

"You model inclusion," said Claudia Onefre, a kindergarten teacher in Albertville who was once herself an English language learner. "If you are afraid of it, then these babies are going to feed off that."

School and district leaders said more students have been able to test out of English learner programs after making tweaks to class schedules, hiring more translators and aides, and giving staff focused time to drill down on language and test-taking skills.

But those supports require resources.

At the school level, educators acknowledge that while growth can be challenging, it's not the students themselves that are problems, but how slowly state and federal resources arrive to support them.

Officials at the Alabama State Department of Education say they have boosted the number of EL specialists across the state, invested in virtual translation services and have revamped state guidelines to better serve English learners. The department recently requested about $1.5 million extra from the legislature, for a total of $20 million, for schools serving large amounts of English learners.

Staffing, however, remains a challenge, and could only get worse as federal pandemic relief funds dry up.

"Schools are grappling with budget shortfalls, leading to staff reductions, including English learner staff," Maria Franco, ALSDE's EL specialist, said in a statement to AL.com.

"Bottom line, we're going to welcome kids into our schools regardless of what languages they speak, regardless of what color they are, we're going to teach those kids to the best of our ability," Bart Reeves, who became Albertville's superintendent last year, told AL.com. "That's our job as educators. That's why we go into education. But that doesn't mean that the challenges are not real, because they are."

Growing immigrant communities

In the past 25 years, an increasing number of immigrants have made Alabama home – a trend that has led experts to refer to the state as one of several "new destinations" for individuals born outside of the U.S.

But that could change with the recent reelection of former President Donald Trump, who has vowed to deport millions of migrants on day one of his presidency and to end automatic citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants. Though naturalization rates have improved in the past decade, about three in five foreign-born Alabamians did not have permanent legal status in 2023.

State Superintendent Eric Mackey told AL.com that it's too early to tell how schools would respond to any major policy changes or deportation plans.

"I think we'll just have to follow those processes and we'll see what may happen," he said. "Students show up to schools every day and we don't ask for social security numbers, we don't ask if they're citizens or not. If they show up, we educate them... I don't want to understate the fact, though, that it does take extra resources."

In Marshall County, where Albertville is located, about 85% of residents voted for Trump . Nationwide, Trump won the support of about 45% of Latino voters, according to exit polls.

Growing pockets of immigration in Alabama became a key topic of debate in the months leading up to the 2024 presidential election.

In Albertville this summer, social media posts claimed buses were secretly bringing migrants into the area. State and national lawmakers weighed in , connecting the claims to the Biden administration's policies and claiming that "every state and community has become a border town." A chicken plant said the buses had been chartered to transport employees to work, and that the employees, some of whom were Haitian, were all cleared to work legally. Local officials complained about the "climate of controversy, baseless accusations and hurtful rhetoric."

In America, any child can attend a public school, regardless of their immigration status.

"It's something that inevitably gets politicized, but at the end of the day we're just trying to do our best for children who are our students," Nancy Blanco, a world languages and ESL coordinator at Birmingham City Schools, told AL.com in October. "And we have to remember that these are children who deserve and are legally entitled to every opportunity that their native English-speaking peers have."

State support

Across the state, school districts are wrestling with lower budgets and tough choices.

DeKalb County federal programs director Anna Hairston told AL.com that the district used COVID relief funds to hire retired teachers to help with English learners. Some schools have continued those services, but now that that money is gone, some have discontinued contracts.

In Birmingham, Blanco said the district has maintained funding for EL teachers and aides.

But more EL students means increasing caseloads for those staff. She would like to see legislators place a cap on caseloads, as well as require EL courses in teacher prep programs.

Gadsden City Schools now serves 709 EL students, but has just 13 EL or bilingual staff. Federal programs coordinator Hector Baeza pointed out that there are more than 40 special education staff in the district to serve a similarly sized subpopulation of students.

"I'm pragmatic about this," he said, noting that just a fraction of Alabama school systems have a large EL population. "Those systems have to be judicial in the way they use local resources, state resources and federal resources. I wish we could see an increase, but nationwide – I understand the climate."

In Albertville, the federal government provides just $89 per English learner – enough to fund about 2.5 employees for about 2,100 children. State support has increased some, to about $534 per student, which currently funds many of the district's bilingual staff.

State lawmakers passed a bill this year that would allow more schools with big EL populations to hire extra auxiliary teachers. Reeves said he's eager to tap into that opportunity soon.

"Any support, whether it's financial or whatever, we would greatly welcome," he said. "But at the end of the day, the federal government's got to step up."

'The tone you set'

When Onefre joined her family in Albertville from Oaxaca, Mexico, around 1996, she was one of just three or four English learners at the elementary school. Her first days at school were tough.

"I would lock myself in the bathroom and just cry and say, '¡Mi casa, mi casa!'" she said. "I didn't like the food. I couldn't tell anybody what I needed."

Her kindergarten teacher had spent a year in Mexico and knew some Spanish, which was a godsend, she said. Some Spanish-speaking staff members, Miss Garcia and Mr. Young, eventually intervened, and she'd spend periods with them talking and singing as Mr. Young strummed a guitar.

By the time Onefre got to high school, she was at the top of her class, thanks to educators who empowered her, she said. But not everyone was supportive. One teacher assigned her and the "other brown kids" seats in the back of the class. Despite how many times she raised her hand, she was never called on.

"That made me feel this big," she said, making a tiny gesture with her fingers. "But if I would have been able to speak up for myself, it would have been different. It's all about the tone you set, whether it's at home, whether it's in the classroom, whether it's at school."

Twelve years ago, Onefre decided to come back to Albertville to teach. She now co-leads a kindergarten classroom with 34 students, where about half are English learners.

She strives to make her classroom – with its purple walls, brightly colored bookshelves and a yellow playground slide near her desk – a welcoming place for all her students. She tells them to be direct about their needs and feelings. Recently, she said, a student asked her to teach them Spanish so they could help their Spanish-speaking friends in class.

A recent RAND study that looked at Delaware, another state that has seen a recent boom in its immigrant population, showed that growth of English learners contributed to gains in language arts and math among both EL and fluent students.

But success "depends on a lot of factors," researcher Umut Özek said, "including the characteristics of the receiving community, the characteristics of incoming immigrants and their educational needs, the resources available in receiving communities, among others – there are just so many different variables."

Districtwide, Albertville has added a number of supports for English learners, including bilingual aides, EL teachers and new translators. This year, they opened a newcomer academy in the high school to help new immigrant students catch up. And they're working to train more multilingual students to become teachers like Onefre or aides like Murry and Santiago.

But as the population grows, Onefre said, she and other staffers are starting to feel spread thin. Schools need more teachers, more classrooms and more resources to address students' varied needs, but the district doesn't have the tax base to fund them.

"There's got to be more ways for our students to have what they deserve," she said. "It's public education."

More resources would unlock more opportunities, leaders said, for students to meet their potential.

"Mrs. Murry said it best," Julie Ann McCulley, the district's chief academic officer, said after peeking her head in the EL classroom that afternoon. "Instead of seeing this as a challenge, this is an opportunity for all learners to grow and be successful."

McCulley said she has big plans for the future. She wants to provide more programs aimed at building English skills after school and before kindergarten.

"You've got to keep thinking and keep dreaming," she said.