2008 Woodie Awards
Problems face refugee children in Guilford County
Simon Kelly
Issue date: 4/27/07 Section: News
Since the mid-1980s, Greensboro has undergone a dramatic demographic shift due to a steady influx of refugees from all parts of the globe. It has had a beleaguering effect on the Guilford County school system, thus compromising the educational benefits available to refugee children.
This has proven a challenge for the system, not only because of the number of children these refugee communities yield, but also their ethnic and linguistic diversity, with families from Mexico, the Sudan, Liberia, the Montagnard highlands of Vietnam and countless other places beset by political or social inequities.
An educational crisis has arisen in Guilford County, and as is often the case with public school systems, budget and faculty are spread too thin to be able to directly minister to the needs of these children.
"One of the problems is that the schools don't know who is going to show up at the door with ESOL needs," said Mary Anne Bush of the Center for New North Carolinians, an organization that operates in conjunction with AmeriCorps through UNCG.
"So if (the schools) put a budget in and they thought they'd only have 10 students, and then they get 45, the budget doesn't catch up with them until the next year," said Bush. "So for a whole year, they are deficient in providing the service because they weren't anticipating it - that is a multi-layered problem."
Bush administers the Glenhaven Multicultural After School Tutorial program, which is situated within the Glenhaven Apartment Complex, where many of the refugee children who attend some of the surrounding schools such as Jesse Wharton Elementary, Mendenhall Middle and Page High, live with their families.
While the program tries to work closely with schools, there is almost as big a communication gap between them and Glenhaven as there is between teacher and student. This can be confounding for tutors, who come from both Guilford and UNCG to volunteer, only to find that the homework assigned to the children is fraught with instructional errors and typos. This makes for a frustrating experience for all parties.
This has proven a challenge for the system, not only because of the number of children these refugee communities yield, but also their ethnic and linguistic diversity, with families from Mexico, the Sudan, Liberia, the Montagnard highlands of Vietnam and countless other places beset by political or social inequities.
An educational crisis has arisen in Guilford County, and as is often the case with public school systems, budget and faculty are spread too thin to be able to directly minister to the needs of these children.
"One of the problems is that the schools don't know who is going to show up at the door with ESOL needs," said Mary Anne Bush of the Center for New North Carolinians, an organization that operates in conjunction with AmeriCorps through UNCG.
"So if (the schools) put a budget in and they thought they'd only have 10 students, and then they get 45, the budget doesn't catch up with them until the next year," said Bush. "So for a whole year, they are deficient in providing the service because they weren't anticipating it - that is a multi-layered problem."
Bush administers the Glenhaven Multicultural After School Tutorial program, which is situated within the Glenhaven Apartment Complex, where many of the refugee children who attend some of the surrounding schools such as Jesse Wharton Elementary, Mendenhall Middle and Page High, live with their families.
While the program tries to work closely with schools, there is almost as big a communication gap between them and Glenhaven as there is between teacher and student. This can be confounding for tutors, who come from both Guilford and UNCG to volunteer, only to find that the homework assigned to the children is fraught with instructional errors and typos. This makes for a frustrating experience for all parties.
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