[lg policy] Washington State: Moses Lake schools update language policy

[Harold Schiffman]

 Moses Lake schools update language policy

November 08, 2016 at 5:00 am | By CHARLES H. FEATHERSTONE Staff Writer

MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake School District is updating its language
policies to help it communicate better with parents whose knowledge of
English is limited or don’t speak English at home.

The school board is required to identify parents with limited English
proficiency and then provide a number of documents involving registration,
policies, discipline, standards and performance, and handbooks in languages
other than English if a particular language group makes up at least 5
percent of the district’s total parents.

In the Moses Lake Schools, that language is Spanish.

The change in policy was prompted by concerns that students were being
asked to translate for their own parents during disciplinary meetings or
that educators and administrators were relying on inaccurate or overly
literal Google translations.

“Many of these policies are already in place, many forms are already
available in Spanish,” said District Superintendent Michelle Price. “We
identify the primary language at home, and can send out messages in that
language relating to events and emergencies.”

School board member Oscar Ochoa said the school board is talking about ways
of getting things translated and how many translators the district would
need in order to have people on hand or available to each of the district’s
15 schools.

“How many are too many?” Ochoa said, noting that the district won’t need as
many translators as there are schools, and so will spend time on the road
shuttling between campuses.

“Getting a person to a building in a timely way, how do we make that work?”
Ochoa said. “That person will be going back and forth.”

Price said hiring translators is “a normal cost of doing business” and that
the district will continue its efforts to recruit bilingual staff.

According to Price, about 20 language are spoken in the Moses Lake School
district, though only Spanish meets the 5 percent or 1,000 parents
(whichever is smaller) threshold.

Ochoa, however, said that some work needs to be done to make documents and
translation available in other languages, especially for the district’s
Russian and Ukrainian speakers.
http://www.columbiabasinherald.com/article/20161108/ARTICLE/161109920


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