The number of people who don’t speak English is rising faster in the suburbs than in Chicago, creating a verbal stew from Cicero to Aurora and throughout northwest Cook County, a Sun-Times analysis shows.

In Palatine School District 15, for example, students now speak nearly 60 languages, including Spanish, Urdu, Malay and Arabic.

District officials expect the number of students with limited English proficiency to top 1,600 by the end of this school year — a near doubling since 1990. The district has about 12,000 students.

“I would guess it has to do with job opportunities and affordable housing — the same reasons (English-speaking) people move here,” said Barbara Marler-Falcone, the district’s language programs coordinator. “It’s a natural progression for many families.”

The increase in non-English speakers has presented communication challenges to everyone from 911 dispatchers and hospital staffs to teachers and judges.

Even everyday transactions — such as calling a pediatrician, asking for directions when driving or reading a note sent home by a child’s teacher — can be a problem.

At local colleges, English as a second language classes have waiting lists. AT&T operates a “Language Line” to help police dispatchers.

A Sun-Times analysis of state education data shows that in the last four years the number of students with limited proficiency in English grew nearly twice as fast in the suburbs as in Chicago.

Chicago posted an increase of about 11,000 students, a gain of 19 percent. Increases in Cook County suburbs ranged from 20 percent in the north to 42 percent in the west to 33 percent in the south.

Western Cook County posted a 42 percent gain, from 6,909 to 9,823. More than half the increase occurred in one suburb, Cicero.

In Cicero School District 99, the real boom began in the mid-1980s, when enrollment also was on the rise. Huge growth — sometimes a doubling of the number of limited-English students from one year to the next — led the district to develop what is now the state’s second-largest bilingual program. (Chicago’s is the largest.)

Although Spanish is the most common language other than English in the Cicero schools, students also speak Arabic, Bosnian, Polish, Romanian and Vietnamese, said Cindy Mosca, the district’s minority services coordinator.

The dramatic increase has been particularly felt by Cicero’s police dispatchers.

Like several northwest suburban police departments, Cicero uses a California-based, over-the-phone AT&T translation service. The 24-hour Language Line offers translation in 140 languages.

The service recently helped Cicero police communicate with an elderly Lithuanian woman who had wandered off from her caretaker.

“We couldn’t understand anything — not a word,” said Bob Fronek, Cicero’s 911 coordinator.

The Northwest Central Dispatch, which handles 911 calls for Arlington Heights, Palatine, Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove Village, Mount Prospect and Prospect Heights, has seen a 70 percent increase in Language Line calls since 1993, the first full year of use.

In the Arlington Heights area, translators are also available through a language bank. The bank — a list of about 60 local residents who speak more than 30 languages — was started by a resident as a resource for police.

“It just mushroomed into schools and hospitals,” organizer Jane Blew said. “I never thought about all these needs, like in the schools with parent-teacher conferences. I was really surprised — I never realized our community was this diverse.”

Virginia Gibbons, an English as a second language coordinator for Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, said she has watched as immigrant groups moved into the north and northwest suburbs over the years, drawn by jobs.

Fifteen years ago, many of the college’s Russian-born students seemed to live in Rogers Park, she said. But then, about 10 years ago, she noticed a “huge influx” of these students at the college’s Skokie campus and, in the past five years, “they all seem to moving to Buffalo Grove.”

Many northwest suburban schools have expanded classes for lmited-English students, arrange for translators to help out during conferences and send home translated notes.

This fall, District 15 opened its Newcomers Interim Services Center in Rolling Meadows. The center houses classrooms for many of the district’s limited-English children, and offers workshops for parents who speak little English.

Director Milagros Bravo said the center is designed to give people a “low-anxiety” place where they can learn English, learn about American culture and feel comfortable asking for help.

The center helped a Polish family find a doctor for their child. It helped a Russian family find an English as a second language class. It helped a Mexican family take their child to the dentist.

“We went and acted as a translator,” Bravo said. “People need this contact. We give them a comfort zone.”



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