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Updated: 7:45 PM PDT Sep 15, 2022

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Editorial Standards ⓘ

Christian Balderas

Salinas City Elementary is one of nine California school districts that's sharing a $1.78 million, two-year grant for multilingual students.

More than three million students in California are multi-language learners, the largest of any other state. And about 95% percent of Salinas City's student body speak Spanish, and half speak English as a second language.

Salinas City used its $200,000 portion, awarded last school year, to partner with West Ed, a nonprofit academic consultant group that's helping the district analyze student needs and implement new teaching strategies.

"Together as partners we developed leadership teams," Dr. Velma Veith, the director of emergent bilinguals for the district, said. "They receive individual support with looking at data that then helps leads to how we form instruction. We then study the outcomes on a six-week cycle, and decide what the next steps are."

Since hiring West Ed, the district reports significant improvements in academic performance.

At the end of the 2021-22 school year, the district had about 70 sixth-grade students move out of the English as a Second Language program, and this fall they're anticipating an even larger success.

"Based on the summit of ELPAC scores of last spring, right now we're in the process. We have a potential group of about 200 students that can reclassify now in the fall," Veith said.

The vast majority of the school district's students come from agriculture-working families, whose parents move every fall to Yuma, Arizona, for work.

"Every time you move, you're breaking that stability," Oscar Ramos said.

For the past 25 years, Ramos has been working at Sherwood Elementary School, the largest school in the district.

"We had those talks in parent-teacher conferences and would say, 'You might want to consider just having one of the parents go and have the rest of the family stay.'"

In the early 2000s, Ramos says he witnessed a culture shift.

"What happened is the dad started going to Arizona, and the mom and kids would stay home here in Salinas or both parents would go and leave their parents with other family. I'm proud to say, I think that started here." Ramos said. "Half of the parents would leave, but now maybe you have two or three families leave. It's a hard sacrifice. "