MASD Works to Bridge Gap With Latino Students

Advocate: More needs to be done to help local Spanish-speaking population get ahead

By Adam Reinherz
The Tube City Almanac
October 01, 2024
Posted in: McKeesport and Region News

In February, students at Francis McClure Elementary School learned about volcanoes and the culture of Chile with the help of Pittsburgh’s Latino Community Center and teacher Nevenka Kostley. The non-profit LCC is urging the McKeesport Area School District to do more to help the region’s small but growing Spanish-speaking population. (Photo courtesy Latino Community Center via Facebook)

An educator who works with the McKeesport area’s growing number of Spanish-speaking students said that more needs to be done to help them learn and succeed.

Last month, McKeesport Area school board approved the hiring of Kaelynn Hillegass for translation services at a rate of $35 per hour, not to exceed 10 hours per week, to be paid for by Dick’s Sporting Goods Foundation.

Hillegass was already helping McKeesport Area High School students prepare for college or a career, through her work with Human Services Center Mon Valley, she said. The new role ensures that gaps will be “bridged” between the district and families.

Although Hillegass’s help is welcome, Monica Mendez, director of programs for the Latino Community Center, cautioned that the school district is going to need to do more.

“Adding one person, as amazing as she may be, is not going to be enough,” Mendez said. “The kids need super amounts of support in order for them to be able to advance.”

The LCC, based in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood, runs an after-school program at Francis McClure Elementary School.

About 70 students attend the program, however there’s only room for 24, Mendez said.

“Our organization, as a not-for-profit, only has limited capacity,” she said. “I'm very worried about the fact that my people are getting burned out because they cannot handle the number of situations that they have to handle. We don't have enough volunteers. We do not have enough capacity.”

Although still relatively small, the number of Spanish-speaking residents in the school district is growing.

According to U.S. Census Bureau data, in 2010, of McKeesport’s 19,731 residents, 451 were Hispanic or Latino. A decade later, although McKeesport’s population had decreased to 17,727 people, 625 residents were Hispanic or Latino.

A similar pattern can be observed across Allegheny County — despite the overall population declining, the number of new residents from other countries is ticking slightly upward.

Between 2014 and 2019, although the county’s population decreased less than 1 percent, during the same period the immigrant population rose by 14.2 percent, according to the American Immigration Council.

During the Sept. 12 school board meeting, one native Spanish-speaking parent who spoke with the help of an interpreter, lamented the lack of Spanish-speaking personnel in the district.

When her child’s afternoon bus ran nearly an hour late for two days in a row, the parent said, she tried to talk to someone at the district about the problem. Unfortunately, she said, “nobody spoke Spanish and I don’t speak English,” she said.

There should be somebody “for us, the Latino community, for us to ask, to talk to if they are OK, if something is wrong, how they are doing, so we can know, but there is no Spanish in the school where my children study.”

Matthew Mols, assistant to the superintendent, said the district is working to bridge those gaps with the help of people such as Hillegass.

“Thanks to the Dick's Sporting Goods Foundation, we were able to fund that position, and I mentioned that to the Latino Community Center last Thursday,” he said. “We are very fortunate to secure [Hillegass’] services, and we're very sorry for the hiccup, but this is not reactionary. We were proactive in anticipating this issue, and that’s why we were able to secure her, and we hope that she can help bridge that gap.”

The district should be applauded for its efforts, Mendez said, and should be commended for trying. But, she said, more needs to be done.

“If we ignore this problem, continue to ignore this problem, this is going to be turned into an even bigger problem,” she said. “These kids are going to grow up to be our neighbors. They're going to grow up to be the people who are running McKeesport…and they are not going to make it if we don’t provide the support that they need.”

Small non-profit groups, such as the Latino Community Center, cannot meet the demands, Mendez said.

“We’re supposed to be doing identity affirmation, heritage celebrations, helping [students] with social emotional learning,” she said. “What we end up doing is spending the whole time working on homework that they do not understand, because it is all in English and it is all in different levels.”

Mendez said she knows the district is aware of the issue but hopes a wider perspective is adopted.

“The families are here to stay. In fact, in Allegheny County the immigrant and refugee families are the ones that are filling up the schools and the communities,” Mendez said.

Mendez said — “very respectfully,” she stressed — that she wants the school board to “understand that this is something that’s happening right now, and it can't wait for future decisions. It can’t wait for whenever we have time. These are kids that are growing up in our community, and if we don't get help to them now then it's going to become problematic for the community in the future.”

Adam Reinherz is a Pittsburgh-based journalist. He can be reached at adam.reinherz@gmail.com.

Originally published October 01, 2024.

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