SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. — With a strong economy and plentiful jobs, Tennessee seems like Eden to many Hispanics. But new arrivals find even paradise has problems if you don’t speak the language.

Deciphering bus schedules, finding a doctor — even buying furniture — are difficult enough. Going to school, appearing before a judge or dealing with police can be terrifying.

On the other side, state and local government agencies with tight budgets are struggling to accommodate the influx of Hispanics. The Bedford County school system is a good example.

Five years ago, there were only about 40 non-English-speaking students. But now, with hundreds of Hispanics working at the Tyson Foods plant in Shelbyville, about 200 of the 6,000 students don’t speak English.

“When you compare us to places like Knoxville, Nashville or Memphis, we are a small system. But you can imagine the impact this has had,” said Peg Austin, who handles non-English-speaking students for Bedford County. “We couldn’t start and crawl — we had to run from the very beginning.”

The school system has a Spanish-speaking liaison who spends most of his time helping immigrants fill out forms and translating for parent-teacher conferences. But there are no teachers fluent in Spanish and no money to hire ones who are.

“You’ve got to recognize you’ve got three frustrated groups here,” Austin said. “You’ve got children trying to learn in a language they don’t understand. You have teachers who feel very strongly about helping these children but they don’t speak Spanish. And you’ve got a school system with very limited funding to help.”

The picture is the same across the state, even in large urban school systems.

In Nashville-Davidson County, there are about 3,000 students in the English as a Second Language (ESL) program this year. Approximately 1,150 are Hispanic, up from 900 last school year and 500 the year before.

Sue Reynolds, coordinator of foreign languages and bilingual/ESL education for Davidson County schools, said staff for the program has grown from 15 four years ago to 72 now.

But that’s only enough to cover the bare minimum, Reynolds said. Elementary school children who speak no English get an hour a day in special English classes. Older students get two periods a day. They spend the rest of the time sitting in regular classrooms, often understanding little.

Hispanic adults also face problems. Courts are particularly troublesome because there are few Spanish interpreters to help them understand the legal system.

“If you’re a judge and you have somebody who doesn’t speak English in your courtroom, they tie up your courtroom. They make a three-hour docket into an eight-hour docket. They tie up your staff, they take a lot more time to handle,” said Nashville attorney Fred Ramos, a member of the Tennessee Association of Spanish-Speaking Attorneys.

Courts can appoint translators but, like bilingual teachers, they are not easy to find. To help, the state Supreme Court and Tennessee Foreign Language Institute are starting a program to train and certify court interpreters in more than a dozen languages.

Some immigrants end up in court simply because they cannot communicate with police.

“Hispanics are very vocal and we like to speak with our hands and that can come off as aggression towards an officer,” said Cesar Gracia, community relations officer for the Kingsport Police Department.

Gracia started a program this fall to educate the city’s police officers, dispatchers and jailers about the area’s 27 nationalities. Other police departments also are reaching out to immigrants. Greeneville has borrowed Gracia’s lesson plan and a dozen McMinnville police officers took Spanish classes last year.

Most outreach programs for Hispanics are, like Gracia’s, locally based. But the Nashville advocacy group Unamonos is seeking to make more opportunities available to Hispanics across the state.

It is having some success.

When the group started five years ago, the state driver’s license test was only available in English, co-founder Mario Ramos said. In 1996, group members worked with the governor’s office to find funding for translations, and now the test is available in Spanish at eight locations around the state.

With more Hispanics expected to arrive in coming years, Unamonos is setting its sights on grander goals, like getting state support for bilingual education in schools and electing Hispanics to political offices.

Meantime, small victories are gained elsewhere.

Nora Sanders moved to Shelbyville from Monterrey, Mexico, five years ago to be with her American husband. She now confidently welcomes visitors to their import business.

But she shakes her head when she remembers how hard it was to adjust.

“I had studied English in school but I could not speak it,” she said. “I made so many mistakes, at the store, everywhere.”

Those on the other side of the equation are adapting, too.

Dale and Debbie Cleek, Shelbyville natives who own a secondhand furniture store on the main square, said when Hispanics started visiting their shop a few years ago, they didn’t know how to communicate with them. They now get by with a lot of pointing and a little Spanish.

“They’ve been good for the used furniture business,” Dale Cleek said. “Amigo — we’ve learned that word. Amigo means friend.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the last of three stories on the rise of Hispanic population and culture in Tennessee.



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