BACKGROUND
The Superintendent’s Advisory Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Student Concerns (SACIRSC) has focused this year on three major areas: Short- and long-term action to address critical problems with student mental health and well-being; the 5-year Strategic Action plan under development to improve the English Learner program; and continued improvements to communication with families.
The Committee’s discussions have been informed by in-school developments, parent and staff experiences, APS reports, and the results of the Committee’s spring-summer 2022 survey of how immigrant families experience communication with/from APS.
Each year, the Committee is charged with making year-end recommendations to the Superintendent. Below are the year-end SACIRSC recommendations from the 2022-23 school year.
RECOMMENDATIONS
I. Make student behavioral health a top priority next year: In the 2023-2024 school year, prioritize staff, financial, and other resources needed for both interventions for students suffering from a mental health and/or substance abuse crisis and development of a robust set of preventive measures ranging from more after-school and summer offerings for students to peer support programs for students and parents.
The Committee has welcomed quick action by APS this year to expand help for students in crisis and to budget for desperately needed increases in behavioral health staff for next year. We note that classroom and school-based administrative staff have repeatedly reported that they are exhausted by the social and emotional needs of students and feel they need help. Parents likewise are reporting feeling overwhelmed by their children’s mental health challenges. This environment, coupled with multiple school instances involving students in crisis, suggests that student behavioral health must be a top priority for the school system next year, underlying every decision that is made, including actions to address students’ school refusal, chronic absenteeism, and concerning drop-out rates district-wide.
II. Strengthen support for students through extracurricular activities: Engaging immigrant students in extracurricular activities fosters school community, develops skills and promotes physical, psychological and emotional health; yet, students of immigrant families participate at a much lower rate.
Barriers to participation as reported anecdotally by parents and in the Committee’s communications survey are:
a. High school athletic departments are focused on fielding organized, usually competitive teams.
b. Families lack information on activities, registration requirements and deadlines.
c. Families do not understand the benefits of extracurricular activities.
d. Families lack transportation to and from school or activity locations.
e. High school students work after school.
Recommended Actions:
- Educate families: About what extracurricular activities are available, registration process, deadlines, how to participate, and their benefits. Include education for families as to what community resources are available for extracurricular activities, including programs provided by non-profits working with APS students that provide extracurricular activities and programs offered by County sports leagues and the Department of Parks and Recreation.
Consider specifically tasking the Athletic Directors with connecting interested students with opportunities to play, whether on a school team or at another venue. For example, athletic staff might host a representative from the County Department of Parks and Recreation or from a sports league like Arlington Soccer to speak with families or students about their programs.
- Funding: Allot some intramural funds at the district level designated solely for increasing EL participation in extracurricular activities. Schools would be eligible for a stipend if they have a plan of how to use the funds to increase EL participation in extracurricular activities that year. Make the application a yearly requirement. Encourage an EL advocate at the school to work with the Athletic Director to ensure that the funds are used for the best ideas to increase engagement and to help the program succeed.
III. Educate Parents: Refocus on ways to educate parents about APS programs generally, and specifically about their child’s progress. Recognize that parent education is ongoing. It is both critical for newcomers but also important for parents to understand options and challenges as their students progress through the system.
- Create targeted information and programs for newcomer families, including welcome videos for ELL families on need-to-know APS information, as well as how the Academic Program functions in the US (i.e., placements, grading, promotions, diploma types). The Committee’s survey results show that too many families feel lost as they enter the system following registration at the Welcome Center and then are sent to their schools with no resource at the school known to them to learn and acclimate to the system.
- In addition to videos for newcomers, provide informational videos for all EL families on how to participate in APS programs, including, for example, the School Options and Transfer program.
- Designate a day at the beginning of the year at each school to offer an in-person workshop that covers the need-to-know information in the videos and allows parents to ask questions and meet staff.
- Produce a handbook or ELL addendum: We strongly recommend that either the existing handbooks be translated with an ELL addendum or that a handbook be written especially for ELL families. It should include information customized by school, be provided in written and online form in at least four languages and be concise with clear formatting and plain language. Consider asking parents in the community to read the translations to ensure that they are understandable and in everyday native language. The handbook or addendum should include:
i. Creating a ParentSquare account (with link to explanatory video in minority languages).
ii. Navigating ParentSquare (with link to explanatory video in minority languages).
iii. Navigating Canvas (with link to explanatory video in minority languages).
iv. Free / Reduced lunch information and due dates.
v. After-school programs registration.
vi. Attendance / registrar contact information, an explanation of what they do and procedures for communicating with them.
vii. Bilingual family specialist contact information and an explanation of their services.
viii. Counselors’ contact information and an explanation of their scope of services (i.e., transcript requests, letters of recommendation, etc., including services they offer in elementary school).
ix. Clinic contact information and explanation of clinic staff expertise and extent of services.
x. Social workers’ contacts and an explanation of their services.
xi. Information on school resources (for those eligible: free gym uniforms, school and sports fees, graphing calculators to borrow).
xii. Information on the extracurricular programs offered by the school, schedule, due dates, needed forms and / or physical exams.
xiii. Countywide resources (like DHS services, bus passes, dental clinics, health clinics, mental health supports, Dept. of Parks and Recreation programs). An example can be found at this link: https://careercenter.apsva.us/substance-abuse-resources/ This was compiled by Naghmeh Merck, a Social Worker at the Arlington Career Center and a member of the Committee.
xiv. Information on the K-12 academic program in the US (i.e., placements, grading, promotions, diploma types).
xv. Information on extracurricular activities and sports: what is available, how, if and when to try out, importance and benefits.
xvi. Information on intramural sports and sports leagues in the county.
xvii. Information on summer school and summer camps: what is available, how to apply, importance and benefits.
xviii. Information on resources available from non-profits serving APS students and their parents.This handbook should be updated yearly. The information it contains also should be included on the APS website, perhaps in FAQ form and/or with tabbed sections.
- Educate staff: Students are most successful when there exists a partnership between home and school, with successful communication. Include ongoing intercultural communications and implicit bias training for school administrators and athletic directors, as well as classroom and student support staff. One example of training can be located at: immigrantsrefugeesandschools.org.
IV. Empower and support parents: It is in the best interest of APS staff, students, and families for the school system to create strong community bonds with immigrant families. Unfortunately, the survey and feedback from parents indicate that too often these community bonds are lacking. Families feel left to navigate systems on their own and may feel as if school staff are not eager to talk with them. Consistent school engagement with immigrant families is critical to successful academic outcomes. The engagement should be based on the wants and needs of the families, and should be both in person and through easy-to-use communication platforms. This means:
- Parent-teacher meetings; Re-format them to expand participation options and encourage parent access to information. Provide hybrid in-person/online options for ELL families when attending back to school nights and parent/teacher conferences.
- Parent groups: Emphasize to staff the importance of informal parent groups and formalize the parameters of the relationship between APS staff and parent groups to ensure cooperation and collaboration. It is in the best interest of students, families, and APS to bolster this relationship and empower parents to help one another. Encourage community engagement within and outside of schools.
- Support non-profit partners: Explore the possibility of increasing APS staff and budgetary support for minority and immigrant-led nonprofit organizations that are already providing services to EL families (students and parents). For example, non-profit partners like Edu-Futuro, Aspire!, and The Dream Project have worked for years to help youth from immigrant households to graduate from high school and enroll in college. These efforts complement the work of APS and need to reach a greater number of immigrant and Latino students.
- 1:1 parent support: Consider some type of peer mentor or buddy program in which a new family is paired with a current APS family that is willing to walk them through the how-to’s, answer questions, and just generally support them.
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