NOTE ON BALLOTS: I asked for a ballot in Skolt Sa'ami. They didn't have one ~ next election they will have one.
The number of Fairfax County students who speak a foreign language at home is likely to surpass 50 percent of the school population for the first time, reflecting a surge of immigrant families in Northern Virginia, school officials said.
As total enrollment reached an all-time high of 181,500 students when school began Tuesday, Fairfax also saw a major increase in those who will need English language lessons. This year, about 31,500 students are projected to enroll in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), representing 17 percent of the total county student population and an increase of nearly one-third from last year.
Those numbers have profound financial implications for the school system, which spends $3,300 per student for ESOL lessons, county budget records show. With 7,652 new students in ESOL this year, that represents an additional $25.3 million. When you total just the ESOL costs for all 31,500, this equals $104 million. And if you factor in the annual student costs of around $13,000 per student for just the ESOL students, not foreign-born students who have mastered English, the costs are $410 million. So we are talking about $500 million dollars for just the costs of ESOL students, who are here legally or illegally. Add to that other costs. One in four Fairfax County students receives free or reduced price meals in one of the top 3 richest counties in America.
The Fairfax County school system is applying for a U.S. Department of Education grant worth up to $40 million in the hopes it would help the county overhaul schools attended by its poorest students.
The grant, part of an Obama administration initiative called “Race to the Top,” provides about $400 million over four years to individual school systems. “We’re going for this grant because we need every dollar in these tight times,” said Kim Dockery, a Fairfax County assistant superintendent who is on the grant proposal team.
Dockery said the core of the grant would be spent on schools where more than 40 percent of the students receive free or reduced lunches, a measure of poverty in Fairfax. She said that although Fairfax County is one of the most affluent in the nation, nearly 42,000 students live below the poverty line and as many as 2,500 are homeless.
The school costs make up 53% of the total County budget. Property taxes will continue to rise to support the increasing costs. I have yet to hear any Rep go after this issue and say that Fairfax County needs to stop being a de facto sanctuary county and go after illegal aliens in much the same way that Prince William County did under Corey Stewart. Three quarters of the residents of Fairfax County don't have children in the schools.
The board allocated funds to the fiscal 2013 budget to hire about 160 new ESOL teachers. Currently, 860 are on the faculty.
Immigrants have been fueling most of the population growth in Fairfax for years, census figures show. More than one in four county residents are foreign-born, and one-third speak a language other than English at home. As a result, the number of students who need English instruction is the fastest-growing student population in the county, said Teddi Predaris, the county’s director of ESOL services. The same is true across the country and around the region.
In neighboring Arlington County, for example, ESOL students make up 16 percent of total enrollment. In Montgomery County, they account for 13.6 percent of all students; in the District, 10 percent.