Moses Lake schools update language policy

MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake School District is updating its language policies to help it communicate better with parents whose knowledge of English is limited or don’t speak English at home.

The school board is required to identify parents with limited English proficiency and then provide a number of documents involving registration, policies, discipline, standards and performance, and handbooks in languages other than English if a particular language group makes up at least 5 percent of the district’s total parents.

In the Moses Lake Schools, that language is Spanish.

The change in policy was prompted by concerns that students were being asked to translate for their own parents during disciplinary meetings or that educators and administrators were relying on inaccurate or overly literal Google translations.

“Many of these policies are already in place, many forms are already available in Spanish,” said District Superintendent Michelle Price. “We identify the primary language at home, and can send out messages in that language relating to events and emergencies.”

School board member Oscar Ochoa said the school board is talking about ways of getting things translated and how many translators the district would need in order to have people on hand or available to each of the district’s 15 schools.

“How many are too many?” Ochoa said, noting that the district won’t need as many translators as there are schools, and so will spend time on the road shuttling between campuses.

“Getting a person to a building in a timely way, how do we make that work?” Ochoa said. “That person will be going back and forth.”

Price said hiring translators is “a normal cost of doing business” and that the district will continue its efforts to recruit bilingual staff.

According to Price, about 20 language are spoken in the Moses Lake School district, though only Spanish meets the 5 percent or 1,000 parents (whichever is smaller) threshold.

Ochoa, however, said that some work needs to be done to make documents and translation available in other languages, especially for the district’s Russian and Ukrainian speakers.