It might be easy to miss, but the Lee’s Summit R-7 School District is changing.
English Language Development Coordinator Melisha Otero is in her sixth year with the district. In that time, she’s seen the number of English language learner (ELL) students increase dramatically.
During the 2020-21 school year, the number of ELL students hit a recent low of 222, according to state records. By the 2023-24 school year, the latest state data available, that number had nearly doubled.
Otero said it’s even higher now as the district prepares to enter the school year with about 550 active ELL students. Another 184 who recently learned English are being monitored.
That’s only about 3% of the district’s most recently reported enrollment. But it represents one of the ways Lee’s Summit has become more diverse, requiring it to adjust to meet the needs of its current students.
Last year, the district introduced a phone interpretation service called Propio. Events such as family culture nights attempt to build inclusivity. And a two-week welcome center in the district’s central office is open to all but specifically geared toward immigrant families.
Otero said the number of teachers for English language learners has roughly doubled since she joined the district, to 17.
She’d like to see even more staff. She also wants the school district and broader community to understand how rapidly the ELL growth is happening and how to support and include students.
“It’s challenging, just because I feel like we are the unseen population in the district,” she said. “If you look at numbers, it’s obvious that our department has grown. But Lee’s Summit is still slow to grow in accepting the fact that there’s a huge change in diversity in our population here.”
Who are the ELL students?
There’s diversity among ELL students as well.
Slightly more than half speak Spanish, 9% Arabic, 5% Urdu and 5% Vietnamese, Otero said. With 38 languages represented in the district, there are lots of smaller percentages as well.
Jermaine Wilson, assistant superintendent of equity and student services, also named Pashto, Russian, Korean, Pohnpeian, Mandarin, Haitian Creole, Turkish and French as among the district’s languages.
Otero said many of the families have fled hardships in their home countries. Most are refugees or asylum seekers.
Refugees have permission to move to the United States because of persecution in their homelands. Asylum seekers arrive in the U.S. and go through a legal process seeking to stay because of persecution in their home country.
“Our department has really worked on being welcoming to our families,” Otero said. “They feel safe here.”
ELL students make up a small percentage of the district, but that percentage is increasing.
In 2009, the earliest state data available, ELL students were less than 1% of the district’s enrollment. By 2023-24, the percentage had tripled to about 2.5%.
The 550 students Otero counted for this coming year would be more than 3% of the district’s most recently reported enrollment.
The increased ELL enrollment comes as the district has become more diverse overall.
Lee’s Summit schools were more than 95% white in 1991, the earliest data available from the state. Enrollment is now less than two-thirds white.
The percentages of students receiving free and reduced-priced lunch — often used as a proxy for the number of low-income students in a district — has also significantly increased.
Otero said it might take time for the district to register that it’s also becoming more diverse linguistically.
“When people think of diversity, they think of skin color, or they think of socioeconomic status, and that’s not the only thing that’s diverse,” she said. “Cultural and linguistic diversity is important.”
Providing support
On a Thursday in July, Otero and two English language teachers were stationed in the district’s central office to help families enroll. Snacks and school supplies were lined up on tables.
The event, known as the Welcome Center, was especially intended to help non-English-speaking families with school enrollment.
Otero said the event drew eight families the first year it started but had far exceeded that number less than halfway through its two-week span this year.
“The fact that we’ve still helped 140 students enroll with what’s going on politically, just lets us know that we’re doing our job, having them feel safe,” she said. “Our teachers work really hard to not just teach their students English but to also build those relationships.”
English language development teachers are trained to teach students English even if they don’t share a language in common, Otero said. About half of the English language teachers in Lee’s Summit are bilingual, which is helpful in communicating with some families.
The teachers go above and beyond to help with needs outside the classroom as well, Otero said, such as making sure families have food, school supplies or reminders to sign paperwork. It could even mean accompanying a teen to an ultrasound appointment.
Otero said the teachers take care of families so well that it helps the program fly under the radar.
“We’re not the squeaky wheel,” she said.
But she tries to be loud in advocating for more resources, reaching outside the district to groups such as churches for extra support.
“They donated calculators because we don’t have any money right now,” she said. “Whatever my teachers and my families need, I’m always willing to advocate for them.”
Awareness and support outside of the department are growing too.
ELL students used to be bused to centralized sites, Otero said, which gave the impression that regular classroom teachers weren’t responsible for them.
“I wouldn’t say there’s not acceptance. I think it’s just ignorance,” Otero said. “Our program is kind of invisible because, in comparison to other departments, it’s significantly smaller. But the amount of growth is 10 times more than any other department.”
ELL teachers have worked hard to provide professional development and help classroom teachers feel a shared sense of ownership for their students, she said.
The district also recently invested in Propio, a phone interpretation service that staff can use to help communicate with families.
“They can walk into a school and say that they have a language need, or (if) anybody in the front office suspects there’s a language need, they can offer the services,” Wilson said. “We can get somebody on the phone within five minutes to help interpret. … That helped out a lot with families feeling welcome in our buildings.”
While families usually prefer in-person interpretation, Otero said, the service helps fill in the gaps when a staff member who speaks the needed language isn’t available. That’s especially key for languages like Pashto where it can be hard to find local interpreters.
Otero said she’d always like to see more resources, particularly more ELL teachers.
And the political climate has made things more difficult as well.
Throughout most of July, schools were in limbo over whether the federal government would release funding for migrant education and English language acquisition.
Otero has also worried some immigrant families won’t come to school.
“When I have my families not feeling safe, or have my high school kids dropping out because they don’t feel safe, that doesn’t resonate well with me,” she said. “We find ways to graduate these kiddos. They work really, really hard.”
Ultimately, Otero said, the goal is not just to help students achieve academically.
“We want our students to learn and be successful, but we also want them to feel accepted and part of a community,” she said.
“Once they graduate and have a piece of paper that says, ‘You graduated,’ I want them to have (something) beyond that, so they … can have a good future,” she said. “They came here for that.”
