Newly added Charleston Co. jobs look to close multilingual student gap

CHARLESTON COUNTY, S.C. (WCSC) – The Charleston County School District is working to serve multilingual and bilingual students in the district more effectively by hiring 40 additional teacher assistants.

The new hires come as Charleston County is trying to combat the low performance of multilingual and bilingual students in the district. Last year, 2,935 Charleston County School District multilingual learners did not meet their language proficiency goal on the ACCESS test.

“We are looking across the system to see where the greatest need and the highest populations of multilingual learning students are,” Superintendent Anita Huggins said. “We also want to improve access and opportunity for all of our students.”

A news conference was held Tuesday morning at Pinehurst Elementary School following Monday night’s Board of Trustees meeting. It was held at Pinehurst because around 80% of the student population speaks a language other than English at home.

“Because we have such a large bilingual staff now that we’re working on growing, it’s getting out into the community that if you need something, come to Pinehurst. We speak the language that you’re speaking, and we can at least link you up to that resource,” Pinehurst Principal Paul Pallagi said.

The Charleston County School District currently serves more than 8,300 students who are considered multilingual learners. Out of that student population, Spanish speaking students represent over 83%.

“Multilingual learners aren’t isolated to District Four; we see them across our district,” Huggins said. “We have groups of multilingual students across the system, everywhere from Mount Pleasant out to Johns Island and again, highly concentrated here in North Charleston.”

“We’ll prioritize the areas and the schools that need the most resources for kids the quickest,” she added.

The South Carolina state report card showed the district falling behind S.C. in the goal for students who are learning English to become proficient within at least five years of their initial enrollment in public schools.

This is one of the only categories the district falls behind the state in with Charleston at 32.4% and the state ahead at 38.5%.

An example of closing the gap, Pinehurst is on year two of a Clemson Residency Project where two teachers work together in a classroom. A veteran teacher works with Clemson towards their South Carolina coaching credentials while the other teacher works with Clemson to obtain a master’s degree.

This partnership allows students to receive double the amount of effort and individualized attention from their teachers.

“This co-teaching environment allows the integration of students into our Americanized education system and is giving them that additional support that they may not receive in other places,” Pallagi said.

Through the Weighted Student Funding Model, Pallagi explained Pinehurst has been able to hire more bilingual staff members and teachers.

“I now have 10 multilingual teachers that work across grade levels and are working with our teachers in order to come up with language acquisition objectives in order to meet the needs of our multilingual learners,” he said.

Specifically in North Charleston, Pallagi explained the schools’ main focus is now the Latino population since there has been an increase in those families.

“Breaking down that social, emotional barrier and being able to have those authentic conversations with those families have been very, very enlightening and purposeful for us here at the school,” Pallagi said.

Recruitment efforts to hire the 40 teaching assistants have begun and interviews with some candidates are already underway.

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