Ketchikan students who don’t speak English as their first language got a win recently. The Ketchikan School Board voted to restore its English Language Learning department at its most recent meeting.
School board member Ali Ginter said that reestablishing the department is a matter of dedicating resources. She said it wouldn’t add an extra cost to the district.
“We can provide sustainable support for our ELL students without financial strain. We’re focusing on the pivotal role of the superintendent’s appointment of an ELL department head,” she said at the meeting.
PJ Ford Slack is the interim Ketchikan school superintendent. The school board’s vote means that she is tasked with reestablishing the department and organizing ELL instructors. Ford Slack said at the meeting that she wasn’t yet sure what that entails. She said that the district has lost a lot of staff in the last year.
“I am just nervous about not being able to do a good job, especially in light of getting certified people to do ELL. I looked at our numbers, and I understand why that might be a good thing. But I just I need to hear a little bit more about how the committee thought that this would work here,” she said.
English Language Learners’ programs are federally mandated in schools. They support students who are navigating school in a new language. But Ketchikan schools have seen a sharp decline in these resources over the last decade. The department dwindled from half a dozen staff to none. Teachers have reported that the non-native English speakers in their classes have begun to fall behind.
Board member Paul Robbins Jr. said it was a “no brainer” that resources should be restored but he disagreed that it would be “at no cost.”
“We have to task an administrator to be the head of this thing, which means we have to either pull them from another program or overload already overloaded administrators, because this board has removed so many administrators from the district that we are now so low on them that’s what’s going to happen,” he said.
The vote to restore the department passed unanimously after debate.
