LEWISTON — School Committee members agreed Monday to hire five staff members to support English learning students, using additional state funding the school department received because of higher enrollment of those students.
Since this past summer, there are 426 new English language learning students among all Lewiston schools. Those teaching positions will help reduce classroom sizes.
The school department will receive more than $600,000 more from the state, which will continue every year, Superintendent Jake Langlais told the committee. Lewiston schools have had more English language learning students and those numbers are projected to increase.
The extra state allocation will pay for two language and community facilitators and three teachers for English language learning.
There are six language facilitators in the district, including five Somali interpreters and one Portuguese interpreter, according to Lysa McLemore, director of the Multilingual Office.
When staff need interpreting services for languages that the school department does not have, the department must pay for a service by the minute, McLemore said. The interpreters are accessed through phone or video conferencing but she is hoping to reduce the necessity of this service, she said.
She said she expects there are some people in the community interested in these positions and qualified.
The salary and benefits for the positions will cost the district about $90,000.
Ward 2 Committee member Janet Beaudoin was apprehensive about allocating that much to one person’s salary who is not a teacher, she said.
Langlais said the position is year-round, unlike teaching positions.
The three teachers committee members agreed to hire will help the city’s rapidly growing English language learning student population, McLemore said.
Some committee members thought the school department should hire fewer staff members and use the additional money for other projects.
Ward 6 committee member Meghan Hird said some of those extra funds could go toward projects that would help support all students.
Beaudoin expressed similar sentiments, suggesting that the school department hire fewer than the five recommended staff.
Langlais said he doesn’t think it is ethical to take money the state allocated for English language learning students and use it for other projects. If the positions are not filled, the leftover funds allocated for those positions will rollover into the fund balance and could be used for other school department projects.
All committee members except Beaudoin approved the superintendent’s suggestion to seek five staff members to fill the recommended positions.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.