More than 22,000 new immigrant students will start the school year in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, in an enrollment increase unprecedented in two decades.
As explained to Telemundo Superintendent José Dotres, schools that had been below capacity for years are now seeing their classrooms full.
Currently, the county has a teacher shortage and although they have hired more than 600, they have about 300 vacancies due to the increase in enrollment.
As explained by the superintendent, children who arrive with little command of English are being offered accelerated courses to learn the language faster.
Among the challenges for the new course and given the proliferation of new immigrant students, he said that he hopes that these students will not be victims of bullying, although he acknowledged that they are not currently in a crisis of bullying.
“We are training our counselors, our mental health workers and teachers and talking a lot with students about the importance of treating each other with respect,” he explained.
According to Dotres, regarding the new passed laws by the governor Ron DeSantis, this should not prevent helping students who have needs due to their sexual identity or preference. For this, it has counselors, teachers, leaders, directors who know that girls and boys in schools “have to be protected.”
The massive arrival of immigrants caused a collapse in the educational centers. Many schools had at least a hundred new students the previous semester.
He miami dade county He declared in March that he did not have enough money to face the arrival of more immigrant students, so they requested more funds in Education that would cover the training needs of thousands of children and adolescents.
