Spanish-speaking parents of children at Summit School District say a recently unveiled budget proposal for the 2024-25 school year doesn’t go far enough on spending for bilingual staff.
Parents have repeatedly raised concern over the lack of interpretation and translation services being provided at schools this school year, with some saying they struggle to communicate with front desk employees and rely on their children to understand what’s being said during parent-teacher conferences.
Around 40% of the district’s 3,500 students identify as Hispanic, and about one-quarter speak Spanish as a first language, according to district data. With seven employees providing interpretation services across nine schools, parents say the current level of bilingual staffing doesn’t meet the needs of the Spanish-speaking community.
“I feel unable to communicate with teachers and learn important things about what my kids are learning at school and how teachers are teaching them to do those things,” said Tammy Barberena, the parent of an elementary schooler and middle schooler, speaking with the Summit Daily News through an interpreter.
“I know my kids are growing and learning more English,” she continued. “For me, it’s been hard and I know it’s going to take me longer to learn it as a second language.”
In late April, district officials unveiled a tentative spending plan for the 2024-25 school year that includes $61,000 to hire an additional interpreter and translator who can support families of children with individualized education plans, which are tailored to students with different learning difficulties.
In addition to a districtwide interpreter based out of its central office and an on-call interpreter who works remotely, the district has five family liaisons who split their time as interpreters between the district’s nine schools. Interpretation service addresses spoken words while translation deals with written text.
“The theory is to take pressure off family liaisons who are finding themselves in (individualized education plan) meetings trying to translate technical language to families that they’re not trained in,” said Superintendent Tony Byrd.
But even with the additional hire, the district will still be short enough liaisons to fully service all of its schools. Because liaisons must divide their time between schools, parents say they don’t always have the on-the-ground language support they need when entering a building.
Byrd said the district is looking into a number of other proposals to boost bilingual support outside of the $61,000 included in the budget proposal such equipping schools with translation devices and increased pay for multilingual teachers. But specifics still need to be worked out.
“The budget people are seeing does not fully represent the financial commitment that we are going to meet for interpretation, translation and bilingual teachers,” he said.
Parents say they hope that’s the case.
“Hiring one bilingual person is going to help. But it’s not going to end the problem,” Barberena said.
‘It makes me feel excluded’
Parents say a lack of bilingual service in schools has created frustrating experiences during important events like parent-teacher conferences or with getting general information from front desk staff.
During the most recent round of parent-teacher conferences this spring, Barberena said she spoke to about 10 teachers at Summit Middle School and was provided with an interpreter for one of those conversations. For the rest, Barberena had to ask her son, who is learning English, to explain what was being said.
At Frisco Elementary, where Barberena has another son enrolled, she often struggles to talk with front desk staff when she walks in the door. She uses Google Translate on her phone just to get out a sentence.
“I’ll say two words to the person (working) at the front, and they will be like, ‘No, no, no Spanish'” Barberena said. “It makes me feel excluded.”
Liliana Rodriguez Lozalo, a Spanish-speaking parent of two children, one in middle school and the other at Summit High School, said she’s experienced many of the same issues. None of the five high school teachers she met with during a recent parent-teacher conference spoke Spanish — so her son had to interpret.
With her son still learning English, she has no idea how accurate his interpretation was, adding she feels it’s inappropriate to rely on a child to do that work.
“It’s important that someone who speaks Spanish in this case can explain to me everything that’s going on with my kid,” said Rodriguez Lozalo, speaking with Summit Daily through an interpreter.
During times when help was given to her, Rodriguez Lozalo said she still felt it wasn’t enough.
When her younger son began middle school, Rodriguez Lozalo met with district staff to discuss his individualized education plan. While she was provided with an interpreter, she said they seemed overwhelmed during the discussion and were rushing to move on to help the next parent.
Rodriguez Lozalo said she is glad to see the district propose funding to hire someone trained to deal with individualized education plans, but added it “doesn’t go far enough to meet our needs.”
District officials have stressed that next school year’s budget, which must be approved by board of education members by June 30, is still subject to change. And one of the biggest spending decisions, teacher and staff salaries, has yet to be decided on.Salaries account for roughly 88% of total district spending and are currently under negotiation.
Byrd said he’s pushing for increased pay for teachers who speak an additional language both to retain current bilingual staff and recruit new hires. But any decision to increase spending must be balanced with a need to preserve the district’s budget reserves, which have been significantly depleted in recent years.
Over the past four years, the district’s fund balance — which essentially serves as its rainy-day fund — has been cut nearly in half when looking at it as a percent of the total general fund budget, going from 22.1% in the 2020-21 school year to 11.5% in 2023-24.
Officials say they need to keep the fund balance threshold to at least 3% under state law. Previous district policy has also called for an additional 7% on top of that, though officials are now pushing to increase that threshold to 10% for a total fund balance of 13%.
The district’s finance committee has cautioned leaders against drawing down reserves any further, concerns that were echoed by Chief Financial Officer Kara Drake during budget discussions on April 25 when she told board members, “If we don’t start spending less than the new revenue coming in, we’re going to continue using fund balance year over year over year.”
Byrd said he will “never turn in a budget to the board of education that doesn’t preserve” the minimum fund balance threshold.
‘They didn’t take the situation seriously’
Increasing bilingual service has been front-of-mind for a volunteer-parent group for Spanish-speaking families created by the district last year. Dubbed Consejo de Familias Hispanas, which translates to Council of Hispanic Families, the group consists of around 20 parents who meet monthly to hear from and provide feedback to district officials on a host of topics.
Cielo Galindo is one of the parents attending those monthly meetings, which she says have given her a greater platform to advocate for her children. She wants to see a dedicated bilingual staffer at every school to support not only academics but also social-emotional wellness for children and families.
Before enrolling at Frisco Elementary for the 2023-24 school year, Galindo’s two children attended Silverthorne Elementary, a dual-language school where class instruction time is split between English and Spanish. Galindo said the transition has been hard for her and her children, who she said felt more culturally connected at Silverthorne.
This school year at Frisco Elementary, Galindo said one of her children faced several instances of bullying. Galindo said she met with a school counselor after her daughter told her about the bullying earlier this year and was provided with an over-the-phone interpreter so that they could communicate. But, as the bullying continued and Galindo continued to seek district staff’s help, she was not provided with that same service.
Two other times when Galindo came to the school, she said district staff relied on a Spanish-speaking facilities worker to interpret. Because the worker was not well versed in English, the conversations were frustrating and difficult, Galindo said.
“It is different to have someone who is actually bilingual and can understand every word that I am trying to say,” said Galindo, speaking through an interpreter. “It feels like they didn’t take the situation seriously, because they didn’t even use a professional (interpreter).”
Galindo said she was eventually able to connect with the district’s on-call interpreter, who provides remote services to families, to discuss her child’s bullying issues. But it didn’t happen until after she got the attention of Byrd.
Having more dedicated bilingual staff for each school, even if those positions were part-time, would help ensure that parents can get help sooner for urgent situations, Galindo said.
Consejo de Familias Hispanas, the group that Galindo is a part of, released a list of budget recommendations in a March 29 letter to district leaders that called for “allocating additional resources to hire bilingual teachers, family liaisons, and administrative staff in all district schools.”
The $61,000 proposed by district officials is a disappointing response, Galindo said, adding she feels it falls short of what the Consejo group had asked for.
“I feel frustrated, because (the district) is giving us something so minimal,” Galindo said. “They always mention equity, inclusion. But this doesn’t feel like it.”
Byrd said the district is looking into ways to increase cultural connection in schools such as by offering Consejo meetings for parents at specific schools rather than just at the district level.
Other ideas include expanding bilingual instruction to non-dual-language schools by contracting with a service that provides Spanish lessons from remote instructors.
Byrd acknowledged the idea isn’t as desirable as having in-house staff who can teach in both languages, but said it provides a cost-effective way of promoting “cultural understanding and communication for non-Spanish speakers.”
‘We can work together’
Community advocates say dual-language support will continue to be a need well into the future as Summit County’s Spanish-speaking population grows.
Year-over-year, nonprofit organizations have reported a rise in new immigrants in the county, particularly from Central and South American countries. Organizations like Mountain Dreamers, an immigrant advocacy nonprofit, are responding with calls for more bilingual services in all sectors of the county — including its schools.
The nonprofit recently garnered over 150 signatures from Spanish-speaking residents in support of expanding interpretation and translation service providers, such as family liaisons, across the district.
During the April 25 board meeting in which officials discussed their upcoming budget, Mountain Dreamers staffer Yerania Reynoso, who helped lead the petition effort, told district leaders, “It is time for the school district to invest the necessary resources to address positive change in the life of our students” and create “greater equitable and inclusive opportunities.”
Reynoso, who is also a district parent, said she feels hiring more bilingual staff should be a higher-priority budget item. She believes the district’s Hispanic student population will only grow in the coming years, meaning more Spanish-speaking families will need support.
The need will be especially felt amongst new immigrants who arrive with few resources. With the county’s Spanish-speaking residents already facing greater housing and food insecurity compared to other populations, Reyno said it’s imperative that institutions like school districts do more to help.
“If you feel a sense of belonging — that there is someone who wants to help you —you will be more involved with your community, with your kid, with everything,” Reyno said in an interview. “The district should help their parents to help their kids.”
While Spanish speakers may be trying to learn English, for many who don’t have time and money, it can be a challenge, Reynoso said.
“When you are focusing on just your basic needs — housing, food — you can’t think about anything else,” Reynoso said.
With a total budget proposal of $54.6 million, spending for the 2024-25 school year would be virtually flat compared to this year. Officials will be pressed to keep it that way, Byrd said.
While the district received an influx of property tax revenue this year, much of those gains were offset by the state’s school financing formula. That’s because when local funding for schools increases, the state’s share drops.
Additionally, while state lawmakers this year made good on their pledge to wipe away the budget stabilization factor, which has restricted public school funding for more than a decade, it won’t be enough to keep up with the inflationary cost increases that school districts are facing, Byrd said.
“I would love to see a day where we have at least one family liaison for every single school,” he said. “But it’s a matter of balancing that out with the cost of salaries and negotiated agreements.”
Reynoso said she’ll continue to push for solutions for Spanish-speaking parents whenever possible.
“We can work together, every single person,” she said. “We can find solutions, but we’re also looking to the other side. There has to be certain priorities.”
