Arlington schools have five more teachers now then the district had at the beginning of this month. More importantly, they are bilingual educators the district desperately needs. Texas simply doesn’t have enough bilingual educators.

The success is directly attributable to Arlington’s new superintendent, Mac Bernd, who took the risk of spending some of AISD’s scarce resources to send recruiters to California.

California voted on June 2 to dismantle the state’s bilingual education program. The AISD send recruiters west to California where they hoped to lure many of these bilingual educators. The recruiters landed five bilingual teachers and have potential prospects in four others.

The Arlington district has more than 1,700 students in bilingual programs and more than 3,600 students taking English-as-second-language classes. The bilingual program is offered to prekindergarten students through grade 6. ESL classes serve students from prekindergarten through 12th grade.

AISD officials estimate adding 20 additional bilingual teachers and about 25 ESL teachers for the next school year.

Finding these teachers will be a tremendous challenge, but AISD has a head start with these California recruits.

Such ingenuity deserves recognition.



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