TRENTON SCHOOL officials in a dozen New Jersey towns are bracing for an influx of as many as 6,000 Cuban refugee children who are expected to register for school for the first time next month.

Immigration officials estimate that some 20,000 Cubans will be resettled in the state, with the heaviest concentrations in towns with existing Cuban communities, such as West New York, Union City, Elizabeth and Weehawken. State officials guess that 30 percent are school-age children, most of whom will require bilingual instruction.

”If our estimates are accurate,” said an assistant education commissioner, Catherine Havrilesky, ”the school districts involved will need an additional $5.6 million in state aid.”

”We consider the estimate to be conservative,” she added. In Union City alone, where there is a large immigrant-processing center, school officials have counted 750 youngsters who, if they register this fall, will require bilingual instruction.

”Even before our summer school program began,” said Frederick Carrigg, director of Union City’s bilingual education program, ”we had 150 Cuban students for our bilingual summer school. We had 600 sign up. We don’t know how many more kids are just sitting the summer out. Our best guess is we may have more than 1,000 register in September.”

If Mr. Carrigg is right, Union City schools will be hard-pressed for space and qualified teachers. In numbers alone, the Cuban students would cause a 12 percent increase in total enrollment and a 33 percent increase in the number of students requiring bilingual education – ”quite a shock to our system,” Mr. Carrigg said.

State education officials say there is virtually no chance that the 240 additional certified bilingual teachers needed can be hired before school opens. Exacerbating the problem is the lack of money and, say some local officials, of concern by state and Federal agencies.

The State Board of Education dipped into its small reservoir of discretionary funds last week to send $24,000 to the Union City schools. In June, the board gave $46,000 to Union City, West New York and Elizabeth for summer programs. The Federal Government also approved an emergency appropriation of $24,000 for Union City’s summer school bilingual program.

But the emergency appropriations were ”too much, too late,” said Mr. Carrigg. ”We had to delay the start of summer school one week and we lost about half the kids who had signed up.”

The summer school program is important, Miss Havrilesky said, to help refugees get a head start for the coming year and help ease the difficult transition into a new culture.

”These children came here without academic records and all of them have lived under a very different social and cultural system,” she said, adding that the problem was not confined to North Jersey because refugees were also settling in New Brunswick and Camden.

”We are fortunate in Union City because 80 percent of the city is already bilingual,” said Mr. Carrigg. ”The children we are getting seem to have relatives here. They don’t seem to be having the problems we read about in newspaper reports. This is a Cuban community to start with.”

Educationally, however, the problems are monumental. ”We will need about 30 new bilingual teachers and there is no way we can afford them,” Mr. Carrigg said. ”The Board of Education has already said there is nothing they can do and the state and Federal governments have done nothing to help us. If they don’t and we have to absorb the influx, we are looking at 40 to 45 students per class, about double the norm. That is against Federal civil rights laws. It’s a no-win situation.”

Legislation that would help local districts is pending in both the State Legislature and Congress. A bill introduced by State Senator William V. Musto, Democrat of Union City, would provide some emergency financing, but no more, Miss Havrilesky said, than ”a drop in the bucket.” The state is banking on pending Federal legislation that would give New Jersey $14 million in refugee aid.

”There is no way the local taxpayers are going to approve the kind of budget increase it would take to fund this problem locally,” Mr. Carrigg said. ”We are at odds with the state and Federal government about responsibility for this problem. My personal opinion is they will wait until September when we’re desperate. I think both the state and Federal bureaucracies are hoping the other one will take care of it. In the meantime, we are sweating it out.”



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