Parent Communication

students working on laptops Parents of EL students often need special support. School policies regarding attendance, grading, graduation and retention can be difficult even for English speaking parents. But these policies, and many daily practices, are very confusing to ESL parents who have limited English proficiency. Consequently, if deliberate efforts to reach out and explain these policies and procedures to parents are not made, too often these families will not understand basic parts of their child's education. To prevent this, efforts are continually offered to send translated documents home or to provide translators for conferences with teachers or administrators. ESL parents need to feel they can find any answer they need about their child at school.

Translators in Spanish will be arranged by the Title III Coordinator to help parents and teachers address important school concerns. Translation support for other less common languages can also be arranged, as needed, given time to schedule in advance.

Many school division documents have been translated to Spanish including free lunch application, attendance policy, the bus conduct policy, including the Franklin County Handbook. These documents can be found on this ESL website. Every effort will be taken to help parents understand the policies that guide students every day at school. Two annual ESL Family Dinner Nights are also scheduled each year to further reach out to parents. No student or parent should be in a position of not getting the important information about their child.

Community-wide strategies are also in place to facilitate participation of ESL families in broader community involvement. A committee representing a number of helping agencies including ESL instructional staff, has been formed to identify and address needs of these families outside of school. Some of these needs are legal help, basic medical care, and acquiring basic shelter when domestic problems occur. Our goal is to provide advisers and schedule meeting times to give these families the advice and access to services they need.
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