Reply to Fairfax County Public Schools -- Article on Demographic Changes

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]FCPS administrator here--yes, the affidavit is another alternative. If a child was born in another country and the document was lost or unavailable, the affidavit is accepted. As PP said, it is about determining age.

There are plenty of staff who are available to help parents understand this. We have a bilingual parent liaison and office staff members. Families are often connected to other family members and/or have connections through church to learn about registering their child for school. Finally, almost all the parents have jobs and are motivated to get their kids into school if for no other reason than for childcare during the day. They are working and trying to survive.

In my opinion, the requirement for the birth certificate or affidavit does not discourage registration. And the portrayal here and on other threads that there are thousands of illegal immigrants flooding our schools is absurd. Being an ESOL student doesn't automatically mean your parents are illegal immigrants.  Almost all our families have been in the country for years and are properly documented. Many are second generation. [b]They are hardworking and want the best for their children. They are respectful to teachers and want to participate in their children's education[/b].[/quote]

I am an ESOL teacher in a FCPS high school.  I would agree with the part in bold for the most part, but while many of my students' parents want the best for their kids, many of them are working so long and so many hours that they are not able to participate much in how to make that happen.  Also, many of our parents are uneducated themselves, so when it comes to teaching their children good study skills and how to graduate from high school, they don't really know how to help their kids.  While the majority of my students are sweet and hard working, they come with so many challenges that make it difficult from them to graduate.  Many of my students come here when they are 15-18 years old, with only an elementary education from their countries so that they are essentially illiterate.  While they work on learning English, they are just so far behind that even though they can stay in high school until 22, that is not long enough to learn everything they need to know to graduate from FCPS.  I cannot tell you how many kids I have seen come to my school for a year or two and then just drop out because they get frustrated and realize how far behind they are.  Some of them actually stay, but then they remain in the lower levels of ESOL for years which is not really serving them well at all either. It is frustrating, but unless the county really makes a change on how to educate these kids (maybe a different kind of school or diploma?), I think they will just keep dropping out or spinning their wheels in ESOL classes without moving toward graduation.  My school's program is one of the smaller ones, so I am not sure how schools with higher ESOL populations do it (Stuart or Falls CHurch for example).  [/quote]

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