DOJ settlement agreement: New Bedford schools must better address K'iche' speakers' needs

NEW BEDFORD — A two-year investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into services provided to K'iche'-speaking students and families by New Bedford Public Schools ended Sept. 15 with a settlement agreement.

The accord includes obligations to offer oral and pictographic communications for parents and students with limited literacy after it was found that the district's English Learner programs were not in full compliance with federal law.

"Students and families from Indigenous Maya communities often face unique barriers to accessing educational opportunities,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division said. “This comprehensive agreement ensures that the district recognizes and addresses the needs of its substantial population of K’iche’-speaking students, and empowers parents to participate fully in their children’s education.

"The Civil Rights Division is committed to protecting every child’s right to equally participate in school.”

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The DOJ will monitor the plan's progress over the next three years in accordance with the arrangement.

NBPS Superintendent Thomas Anderson said that the agreement strengthens plans the district was already acting on.

“Like all public school districts, it is our responsibility to support students to overcome language barriers and ensure equal participation by students in all instructional programs," he said in a press release. "This plan memorializes strategies and monitoring systems that we previously had in place."

According to NBPS, 42% of the district's approximately 13,000 students live in environments where English is not the primary language.

The DOJ said NBPS was cooperative throughout their investigation.

K'iche' in New Bedford

The investigation began following a complaint by Gordon Duke, the director of Organization Maya K'iche,' USA, Inc. — a New Bedford-based Mayan advocacy group — in October 2019.

"I filed the Complaint and the public really doesn't know the ineptness [of] the school system in trying to remedy a problem," Duke told The Standard-Times in an email. "The first part to litigation is to prevent litigation, and these people force you to take it to Washington."

In the original complaint, the organization accused New Bedford schools of registering K'iche'-speaking students as Spanish, claiming that K'iche' is a dialect and not a language.

"By the city's failure to have any K'iche' speaking staff or the utilization of K'iche speaking translation services for parental consultation, proper and lawful education is being denied," the complaint read.

K'iche', with its approximately one million speakers centered in the central highlands of Guatemala, is one of the most common Mayan languages.

NBPS said in a press release that there are currently 161 K'iche'-speaking students on its rolls.

The most recent estimate of the city's Mayan population is about 7,000 people, according to a 2016 paper published by the now-defunct Public Policy Center at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Many of those are among what the Immigrants' Assistance Center estimates are about 10,000 undocumented immigrants in the city, who have a large presence in the fishing industry.

New Bedford Public Schools did not respond when asked for the number of K'iche' interpreters they work with.

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The plan

The plan focuses on three areas: communicating with parents and helping them through registration, the translation and interpretation of essential information, and ESL instruction.

The district agreed to maintain records of the language access needs of parents in order to best communicate essential information — such as report cards, enrollment documents, policy changes and more — to K'iche' and speakers of non-English languages.

NBPS said it will continue to send out Home Language Surveys to families in order to assess community needs.

The district also agreed to employ staff at its Family Registration Center able to orally communicate essential information .

According to the agreement, "The District will also use icons or pictures to communicate the availability of interpretation in K’iche’" and other languages for those with limited literacy.

The district also agreed to reach out to parents within 90 days to inform them of their language access rights and include the information prominently in buildings and on its website.

Duke said pictographic and oral communication are necessary because the Guatemalan civil war and genocide, which initiated Mayan migration to the U.S. in the 1980s, interrupted the education of many. This resulted in low literacy rates in K'iche'.

"There is a writing system, but [many K'iche' don't] know how to read it," he said. "So, you have someone translating the document and 90% [of the target audience] can't read it."

Also within 90 days, NBPS will train staff on K'iche' culture in New Bedford, on how to determine if a parent requires language assistance, and on how to assist in the completion of the Home Language Survey.

Interpretation and ESL

The school system also agreed to provide qualified interpreters and translators and refrain from the use of students, family, friends, or apps like Google Translate to communicate essential information outside emergency circumstances.

They also said they would provide all principals with lists of employees who are qualified in a foreign language and would require they place the list in an accessible area for staff.

Within 60 days, the DOJ said it expects to receive a plan for classroom observation and teacher feedback in ESL classrooms.

Schools will be required to provide professional development plans focused on sheltered content instruction, student engagement, academic rigor that challenges students cognitively regardless of English proficiency, strategies specific to K'iche' speakers, and culturally responsive instruction, within 30 days of observation.

They will also provide ESL teachers with three hours of training on the K'iche' culture and submit to the DOJ a plan for that training within 60 days of signing the agreement.

Reporting and monitoring

To monitor student progress, NBPS will be required to maintain hard and digitized copies of a students initial English proficiency evaluations and their subsequent progress, retention, dropout and graduation data.

By Nov. 18, the school system must submit anonymous information on each English language learner student including: language, country of origin, race\ethnicity, gifted status, disabilities, the Language preferences of their guardian, their own levels of proficiency and more.

The DOJ also asked New Bedford schools to submit a report on the number of parental interpretation and translation requests, details on training programs, as well as a report reflective of all class observations.

The first set of reports is due on Nov. 18 and then July 1 for each subsequent one.

Contact Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@s-t.com and follow him on Twitter: @KevinGAndrade. Support local journalism and subscribe to the Standard-Times today!

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: DOJ, New Bedford schools reach settlement agreement on K'iche' speakers