LEWISTON – The Lewiston School Committee unanimously agreed to hire two new teachers and one ed tech to help teach English to refugee students.

English Language Learner Director Sue Martin told the committee two teachers are needed to reduce the size of ELL classrooms at the Lewiston Middle School and Montello Elementary School.

An ed tech is needed at Montello to help teach ELL students in kindergarten classes.

Lewiston now has about 750 ELL students, mostly Somali refugees, in grades K-12. This year 30 more arrived. That annual growth was smaller than it has been, Martin said.

The 30 new students are what’s called “secondary migration” students, which means they came to Lewiston from another state, mostly Georgia. They have spent time in American classrooms, Martin said.

A new teacher at the middle school would mean ELL classes could be reduced from 19 to 13, which would help bring students up to speed quicker, Martin said. An ELL class size of 19 is higher than it should be, she said.

A new teacher at Montello would reduce class sizes from 14 to 10.

The cost for the three new positions will be $103,000, counting salaries and benefits. The money to pay for that will come from the extra Lewiston is receiving from the state school funding formula to pay for refugee students not yet proficient in English, Levesque said.

– Bonnie Washuk