Boom in English-learner population prompts Henrico Schools to expand staffing and newcomer programs

Henrico County’s English-learner population is “exponentially growing,” Henrico Schools officials said recently, and division leaders are trying to quickly increase the number of ESL staff to accommodate the influx.

During the past five years, 1,866 new students identified as English-learners – students who demonstrate difficulty in achieving standard English proficiency – have joined HCPS, but only 33 new ESL (also referred to as Language Instruction Education Program, or LIEP) teachers have been hired. At a Henrico School Board meeting last month, board members Marcie Shea (Tuckahoe District) and Micky Ogburn (Three Chopt District) said that was a notable concern for the school division.

At the board’s Dec. 14 meeting, HCPS officials shared efforts of division leadership to meet the needs of the growing English-learner population, including increasing staffing and expanding certain ESL programs. Since 2014, Henrico Schools’ English-learner community has grown by 84% – the most of any student demographic.

“We continue to serve multilingual learners, teachers and families while addressing unpredictable growth in the multilingual population,” HCPS Director of Elementary Teaching and Learning Michael Dussault said.

HCPS recently added 10 new ESL staff positions to the budget, Dussault said, and is looking to fill these positions. Henrico Schools currently has 95 ESL teachers serving 5,178 English Learners across the county. The division hired 22 new teachers during the past year, following a large influx of 811 new English-learner students in 2022.

But staffing can look different at each school depending on the English-learner population, Shea pointed out. In elementary schools with a smaller group of English-learners, students may only have one part-time ESL teacher in the classroom.

“We need more,” Ogburn said. “We’re exponentially growing. This is not any one district, any one area, this is Henrico. I hope we are really looking to expand.”

Dussault emphasized the importance of staffing for ESL programs and said that HCPS would continue to “analyze staffing needs in real time and adjust accordingly.”

“The ESL teacher is often one of the first educators to make a connection with our multilingual students,” he said. “Our department has worked strategically to ensure that educators have the supports and programming needed best to serve students.”

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About 20% of Henrico Schools students are multilingual-learners, meaning that those students speak a language at home other than or in addition to English. A little more than half of those students are identified as English-learners through a state “home language survey” that all families must complete.

HCPS has students from 120 countries of origin who speak 138 different languages, with the most common languages spoken other than English being Spanish, Arabic, Dari (spoken in Afghanistan), Portuguese, and Pashto (spoken in Pakistan and Afghanistan).

“Our multilingual learners and their families bring a wealth of culture and diversity to our school division and they play an integral part of what makes Henrico County so special,” Dussault said.

English-learner students have the highest dropout rate in Henrico Schools, with a dropout equity index of 4.59. Any number greater than 1 is considered an over-representation of a group, while numbers below 1 demonstrate under-representation.

English learners also had some of the lowest standardized test scores for the 2022-2023 school year. ESL students had a 39% pass rate on reading assessments, 14% pass rate on writing assessments, and a 38% pass rate on math assessments. In comparison, the average pass rate for all students was 69% in reading and 65% in writing and math.

“Universally, we all agree that we should meet the children where they are when they come to the door,” Ogburn said. “That’s our job, that’s what we’ve got to do,”

To help students new to the Henrico school system, HCPS plans to expand its “Newcomer Program,” which targets a specific subset of English learners who have had limited or interrupted formal education. The program is currently located at J.R. Tucker High School, with both Hermitage High and Douglas S. Freeman High slated to receive their own newcomer programs in fall 2024.

Dussault said the program uses a non-traditional school schedule to help students increase their English proficiency at a “rapid rate.” HCPS data has shown that students in the program have made greater gains in both English proficiency and earning class credits compared to a similar population of students at other schools.

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For many English-learner students and their families, their first introduction to Henrico County is the John Vithoulkas Welcome Center at Tucker High. The center has one full-time registrar, one Spanish interpreter, and three teachers that help register students for school, administer English language proficiency assessments, and provide other resources. HCPS recently added one part-time school counselor and one full-time nurse to the center as well.

Ogburn said she has received a lot of positive feedback from families who went through the welcome center.

“Their needs are so many and oftentimes they feel so lost,” Ogburn said. “And it’s not often that we sit up here and get thank you emails, but that’s what I get frequently, a ‘thank you’ for providing this service. I don’t know how many other school systems have a service like that or a place where people can go where they can find out what Henrico can do for them.”

HCPS’s ESL Summer Enrichment Program also provides many students with their first introduction to Henrico Schools. The program was expanded in 2022 through funding from a federal COVID relief grant to add more STEM components, music and arts classes, and physical activities for elementary students. These COVID relief funds must be spent by January 2025, but HCPS has not announced whether it will be able to continue the expanded version of the program through other funding.

Social-emotional learning is an important part of each ESL program, Dussault said, since many ESL students just arrived in the country and have to quickly familiarize themselves with a whole new educational system and culture.

“These students are introduced to a whole new way of learning and surrounded by peers who speak another language,” Dussault said. “Intentional work is critical as they enter our buildings to establish a sense of hope and belonging for our students and families.”

Almost all English-learners experience classes immersed with their English-speaking peers as well as classes that are solely for multilingual learners, Dussault said, so that ESL students are not isolated from the general student population. General education teachers and ESL teachers will often work together in both elementary and secondary classrooms to allow ESL students to access the same content as their English-speaking classmates.

“When students are immersed with English-speaking peers, research shows they will acquire the new language more quickly,” Dussault said. “When they’re isolated away from English-speaking peers, they more readily fall back to only using their native language.”

Elizabeth Holladay Elementary School also has an option for the “reversed approach” – a dual immersion program which students can opt into to receive instruction in both English and Spanish, with the goal to attain bilingual proficiency and biliteracy.

HCPS officials say they want to expand the program, which currently serves pre-kindergarten through second-graders, as well as possibly add a dual immersion program to another elementary school.

The benefits of expanding ESL programs and staffing will be felt by non-ESL students as well, Shea said, and will help prevent teachers from feeling overloaded.

“It’s not just about that subgroup of students, all students in the classroom benefit, all the teachers in the classroom benefit, everybody benefits,” she said.

Henrico Schools should double its efforts at recruiting ESL teachers, said Ogburn, whose last day on the board was Dec. 31, in order to best serve the English-learner student population.

“What we want to honestly be able to say at the end of the day is that we’re meeting the needs of the kids, but we’re also supporting what our teachers are doing and giving them the resources, the materials, the ability to handle what we have asked them to do,” she said.

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Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s Report for America Corps member and education reporter. Her position is dependent upon reader support; make a tax-deductible contribution to the Citizen through RFA here.