As part of budget cuts, Cincinnati Public Schools planned on eliminating the manager of the district’s English as a Second Language program. Instead, they've retooled the position and given it a new name.
Adam Cooper is the interim manager of English Language Acquisition and Access for CPS. He says the first part of that title is the academic side of the job.
“We have a lot of buildings that have really had very few English learners — if any — and suddenly they have such a large population that they require a full department in their building,” he says. “So we have to provide professional development. But in addition to that, really a key piece to what we do is community and family engagement.”
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Cooper says that includes working with community organizations to make sure the students and their families have access to helpful resources.
He says there are about 6,000 students who've grown up in a home where English wasn't the primary language. Cooper says those students represent 80 different languages.
“The largest second language is Spanish. Arabic and French speakers are also a large population,” he says. “Sometimes they speak indigenous languages in Latin American and from Africa. It requires a lot of tools to make sure we can communicate with the families and make sure they understand this great culture that they’re transitioning into, understanding, and being a part of.”
The ESL manager job was originally eliminated to help trim a deficit. The end of pandemic-era federal funding was a major contributor.
