A national publication recently highlighted some remarkable statistics about a local school district.
Education Week, which focuses on K-12 education, reported how dramatically the Springdale School District's demographics have changed over time. It also provides an interesting look at how the district has dealt with the transformation.
In 1989, when Springdale School District had just 7,691 students, 96.96 percent were white, Education Week reported. By the 2012-2013 school year, white students accounted for only 40.6 percent of the enrollment.
What's more, students who were Asian and Pacific Islanders were 11.38 percent of the enrollees and Hispanics accounted for 43.7 percent.
But here's the staggering fact: The numbers of non-white students in Springdale schools in 2012-2013 totaled nearly 8,000, or more than the district's entire student body in 1989.
That puts growth in Northwest Arkansas and in Springdale in particular into perspective. As the region's economy boomed, the area attracted workers. Business and industry grew and so did families.
The school enrollment numbers are part of a brief lead-in to an Education Week interview with Jim Rollins, the Springdale superintendent who has shepherded the district through all this change.
The interview, which is online at www.edweek.org in the Aug. 19 edition, offers insight into how the schools changed with the population.
Springdale schools' guiding philosophy, according to Rollins, has been to teach all children to the highest possible levels.
"Teach them all," he said.
The philosophy was in place when Rollins joined the school district more than 30 years ago, he said, and the philosophy was extended to the immigrant population as those children came to school.
The district had to adapt, of course. Few of the teachers were bilingual in the earlier days. Now, each of the district's 1,500 or so certified teachers has had significant training to work with students from different backgrounds and with different languages. About 40 percent of the teachers have gone back to school to learn how to teach children with English as a second language.
Rollins talked, too, of reorganizing the enrollment process to determine exactly where incoming children were in terms of their readiness to learn. The schools also reached out to immigrant families.
"We brought Hispanic families into the schools to be learners right alongside their children. Those families would come to the schools four days a week, four hours a day, and they would learn right along with their children," Rollins said. Additionally, they could take adult education classes and classes in family survival skills. It all helped with their transition to life in Springdale.
Today, the program is "kind of a model for the nation," Rollins said, noting the district is laying the foundation for the family literacy initiative in all of its schools.
Including the moms and dads, he said, leads to "magical" results. The gap between home and school disappears, parents become advocates for the schools and teachers "and that just boosts the entire educational experience for these children."
Another interesting part of the interview has to do with recruiting new teachers to the district, including "growing our own," as Rollins put it.
The district has had success in recruiting its own graduates to teach in the schools.
"That example is probably as powerful or serves as good a model as anything that we can do because these young people have lived the experience," he said. They know firsthand the needs that immigrant children have.
Rollins' thoughts are especially timely as other communities around the nation begin to cope with the arrival of more immigrant children. He has sound advice for the school districts that receive them.
"These are just children. They deserve our best effort," he said. While schools may have to redefine themselves to serve those needs, they can.
"The willingness to stretch and grow and build capacity within your team to serve children from all backgrounds is an ongoing issue," he said.
"And if the commitment exists to teach all children, our public schools will find a way to do that."
In Springdale, he said, "the wins here far outweigh the kind of challenges that you have."
He pointed to a recent graduate who came to the district in poverty, virtually non-English speaking and graduated from Springdale High School having earned a full scholarship of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"And that's just one success story. I could repeat it over and over and over again."
Springdale should be proud of that graduate and others like her and of the school district that recognizes its responsibility to teach all the children, no matter how they come to be here.
BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.
Commentary on 08/31/2014