Parents of students at Niles Township High School District 219 who were unable to finish elementary school in Mexico could get another chance at a diploma via a new program run jointly through District 219 and the General Consulate of Mexico.
The adult education program, called Alfabetizacion, is geared toward Spanish-speaking parents and guardians of district students. It will feature a “comprehensive range of courses and workshops designed to address the specific needs and interests of parents and guardians,” a District 219 press release stated.
Those who complete the program will earn a certificate from the consulate that is the equivalent of a grammar school or high school diploma, according to the school district.
“We talk about lifelong learning,” Superintendent Tom Moore said at the event to kick off the initiative. “Learning doesn’t end at 18, it doesn’t end at the doors. And we need more programs like this, here, across the country.”
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“For all adults who for some reason interrupted their education in Mexico… this is a way to empower them, to allow them to be an example in their families, when they see that seed of help and effort to become better parents, to become better citizens, to do better in their jobs,” Mexican Consul General Reyna Torres Mendivil said.
District 219 Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and instruction Sandra Arreguin said the district would provide meeting space and technology for program participants, who will meet once a week on Saturday mornings beginning in the 2023-2024 school year.
District 219 spokesperson April Stallworth said the consulate would provide online curriculum materials and that volunteers from the district’s Hispanic Unity Group, supervised by the president and coordinator of HUG as well as the program director, would assist learners.
Stallworth said the program will use a learning software distributed through the Instituto Nacional Para la Educación de los Adultos, or the National Institute for Adult Education. District 219 already owns the laptops the program will use, which are deployed in other district programs and were purchased through a Title grant, she said.
Almost two in three of District 219’s 4,600 students speak a language besides English and while Urdu, Spanish, Assyrian and Arabic are the most common, school district information states that its students speak more than 90 languages overall.
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The district’s Student Services Department “maintains partnerships with various organizations and agencies throughout the Township and Chicagoland area to support parents, guardians, and families of all backgrounds,” Arreguin said in an email to Pioneer Press.
The district also has a bilingual program for students who speak languages besides English at home and a bilingual parent advisory committee, Arreguin added. According to data from the Illinois State Board of Education, 8.9% of the students in District 219 are English language learners.
Other resources for families where English is not the primary language include the Family Liaisons program, which has staff speaking Arabic, Assyrian, Gujarati, Hindi, Korean, Spanish and Urdu, Arreguin added.
The district also collaborates with nearby school districts 68, 72, 73 and 73.5 on the Niles Township Schools ELL Parent Center, which offers English classes, digital literacy, citizenship prep, access to community services and other programming, according to its website.
Arreguin said registration information would be available “shortly.”