Order for a hearing on Government Transparency and Accountability Towards Service Provision and Spending on ELL Students.
Dr. Number 0617 Council member here offered the following order for a hearing on government transparency and accountability towards service provision and spending on e-health students. The chair. The chair recognizes. Counsel me here. Counsel me here. You have the floor. Thank you, Mr. President. And I would like to add Councilor Arroyo as an original co-sponsor. So what if Counsel Arroyo is added? Yes. Thank you. And before I dove into my my speech, I just want to thank all of my colleagues for your enthusiasm and your support. And I really do look forward to bringing all of your voices and all of the feedback. I took notes in regards to the previous hearing order, and I'm really grateful for it. And I also wanted to just quickly acknowledge that, you know, in this chamber, I've learned a lot. And one thing that I have learned more recently is really the need for transparency. And I think one of the things that I always admire and appreciate from Councilor Baker is his ability to really hold the city accountable and to demand transparency. And I think that's a lesson that we can all learn here as we continue to navigate. So in the spirit of accountability and transparency, I think that we all need to do a better job at making sure that we're holding ourselves to that standard. And so the committee that we created for this term was designed to do just that, is to really look at the services, the accessibility of some of our resources, how people navigate city services, accountability. Are we holding ourselves accountable to the promises that we've made? What is the transparency around the dollars that we're spending here in this city? And I think that the committee that we've created, we hope to be able to put it to good use around some of the issues that we all have been here fighting on. And one in particular for me is around the issues around Ells, which which are English language learners. I myself am an English language learner. I learned how to speak English watching Sesame Street, um, and had to be the official translator for my entire block. And so we're here today to talk about and I was also appointed to the Yellow Task Force when I was doing advocacy in the education space. So when we talk about English language learner students, we tend to view it as from the lens of education. But today I want to look at how we as a city are providing care for our students from the lens of government accountability and transparency. Because we're in this budget season and we're seeing all of these numbers come in about how much we're spending to support English language learner students or students with disabilities. But how that money really impacts our students is often a lot harder to impact, especially when we have so much talk about this in our budget hearings. Let's talk about some facts. A December report and 2021 report it report submitted to the Department of Justice from Boston Public Schools, found that more than 11,000 English language learners in Boston Public Schools, 30%, are not receiving enough of the right instruction with a certified teacher surrounded by the right group of students. And in Boston, there are roughly 4000 English learners with disabilities who who often have to choose between receiving support for their disability or their language needs. This is important because, as we know, there's so much siloing of issues in our city, but we need to be intentional about breaking down those silos to support the whole child. And it's clear that we need to be doing more to support our English language students from an accountability and accessibility perspective. So I'm hoping that we can have a worthwhile conversation with the administration and from advocates to learn about how we can move beyond just the conversation around funding and really look at the social and emotional supports of our students, especially ELL students with disabilities. And I just want to give a shout out to John Mudd, who has been a fierce advocate in the entire El Al task force for meeting with our office and bringing this issue to light. We hope that during this year we will uncover what we need to do and how we need to move accordingly to support our most vulnerable students. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman. Here, the chair recognizes counsel of Royal Council. Royal. You have the floor. Thank you, President Flynn. Thank you, Councilman. Here for your years of work for English language learners and continuing that work here on the council. I myself began my political activism around English language learning. My mother was an English language teacher, English language learning teacher, and BP's In the Hands initiative came to town when I was a child . But it's a truth that we weren't doing right by English language learners even before ENS lines just devastated. The way in which we continue to do that work. Now, since 2017, since the LOOK Act has passed, it's really important that we make up ground. As recently as the last five, six years, we ranked as a state 49th out of 50 states when it came to English language learners. And 30% of BEPS is made up of English language learners. It's also traditionally, though, COVID has impacted this. Traditionally, English language learners had been the largest growth part of BEPS in terms of new enrollment. And so making sure that we do right by English language learners, making sure that we're on top of it. We've seen the instability at the Office of English Language Learners at DPS. We've sort of seen how in the budget it's been difficult for them to pin down exactly where and how this money specifically impacts that 30%. And so this kind of a hearing, I think, is appropriate considering the urgency of the issue, the size of the population for our schools and the fact that we really do need to do a lot of work to get this right and to do right by our kids in Boston public schools who are learning a second language, that second language being English and getting getting through our testing and the things that we have. We know that there's conversations about increasing the passing rate or the rather the score required to pass for CAS. And we know that that would have devastating results on a lot of our English language learners already. And so these are the kinds of things that we have to make sure we're preparing children today to be able to perform the way we would like them to perform in our schools with the supports and stabilization they need, while also making sure we advocate to protect them in other ways in which our systems are dealing with them. So I look forward to this hearing. I think, again, Councilmember here and other members of this council have stood up for English language learners throughout their time. Thank you. Thank you. Castle Royal. Would anyone else like to speak in this matter? The chair recognizes Councilor Fernandez innocent council. Fernandez innocent of this law. Thank you, Mr. President. Unlike my council colleagues here, I came when I was ten, so I did not learn English through Sesame Street. It was The Honeymooners and Three's Company that taught me English. But for me, English is my fourth language, and I don't know that people know that. So it's I mean, I was just talking to my colleague yesterday about the difficulty of students and just the spirit of representing all the CV. I am Cape Verdean and my my first language is Cape Verde and Creole. And understanding that I had to learn Portuguese, you know, as a second language and then coming to America in adapting and not going to school for an entire year. I had to learn Spanish to make friends and then eventually learned English in school and then took French in school and then became Muslim and learned Arabic. So all of this, you know, transitional stuff really does not interpret the nuances and the feeling of one's emotions or cultural context when you're speaking a different language. So I was telling I was complimenting somebody here yesterday and saying, you are you're doing math, right? So you are calculating and multiplying and dividing and subtracting when you're speaking. And I really appreciate you that you stand here and you are really being wholeheartedly yourself and being a true self and always, you know, even when you explain let me say it this way or my English this or my English that, I actually connect with you on the same wave because I feel your heart. And I'm also doing a lot of math and interpreting things in multiple languages before I can actually get it out. So in the spirit of that, for the first time here in this chamber, I like to say this in my language, if you guys would allow me, you know, I mean, tiny Financial Times and I mean a couple of the items in the Africa mountains representing us, you know, saving me a couple of piano and silly animals. Masti sing out of me here. Come on, conciliator. 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When we look at our schools that have dual immersion programs, they are very long waitlists because parents recognize that as an asset. If we have a population that is 30% of our public school system, they should be receiving equivalent, if not more resources. And so just rise in support of the transparency around the numbers. You know, we're going to have a breakfast here on Friday to celebrate Haitian Flag Day, and we're going to have students from the dual immersion classroom come and show us what it looks like to live in and be in a classroom where those assets are really celebrated. And so it's important that as we have this conversation, we realize why native language instruction is important and we realize why we need to support our students with interrupted learning and make sure that they're able to access resources and that we need to put our money into the programs for our most vulnerable students, whether it's in language classes or in the facilities that they have. And we're just not doing enough. And so support this hearing order just so that we can get better numbers on what we are and are doing. So thank you. Thank you. Counselors and anyone else like to speak on this or add their name. Please raise your hand. Mr. Clarke, please add Counselor Baker. Counsel, counsel and counsel. Clarity. Counsel our Constitution. Council Rules Council. Murphy Please add the chair as well. DAWKINS 0617 will be assigned to the committee. Well, let me step back. Originally, I was going to assign it to the Committee on Education since the hearing discussed in English language learners. But after listening to council me here, I changed my mind and I'm putting it in the Committee on Government Accountability, Transparency and Accessibility. Mr. Clerk, please read docket 0618, please.