KISD Hispanic population grows, so do bilingual/ESL programs

Tuesday at noon the Kilgore Independent School District's Board of Trustees heard a progress report on the district's Bilingual/English as a Second Language program.

Irva Swetnam, ESL coordinator for KISD, gave the numbers based on the 2007/2008 school year.

"For the first time our Hispanic student population has become the majority for minority student population," said Swetnam. "Our African American student population is at 21 percent and our Hispanic student population is now at 22 percent."

Swetnam said 85 percent of the students in the program were born in the United States while other students are from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela, China, Cambodia, India and Russia.

Last year there were 404 students in the program, with 53 of those students exiting the program at the end of the last school year, said Swetnam.

In the last four years, KISD statistics from the 2004.2005 school year to the 2007/2008 school year a increase of approximately 60 students.

Swetnam said 97 percent of Pre-K students made progress on the English oral language proficiency test and 83 percent of kindergarten students made progress on that same test.

"There were a total of 107 students at Kilgore Heights Elementary School last year," she said.

In the 2007/2008 school year ESL Texas Assessment and Knowledge Skills test results showed marked increases in writing, reading and math, but Swetnam said in the areas of science and social studies, work was needed as there was a decrease in science and just a slight increase in and just a little over 40 percent of students passed social studies.

"In the areas of writing, reading and math, all students were over the 60 percent in scoring," said Swetnam. "Science, too, was just over 40 percent in passing."

She added KISD has made strides to improve its bilingual and ESL staff.

"We have one certified bilingual teacher at Chandler Elementary School," said Swetnam. "KISD has 39 ESL certified teachers, 34 of those certified teaching at all levels, 10 bilingual paraprofessionals (ESL classroom aides) and nine additional teachers acquired ESL certification in 2007/2008."