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All but one school “newcomer centers,” established four years ago to help 80 to 120 new students who were coming to La Crosse from a refugee camp in Thailand, were closed. They no longer were needed.
The newcomer centers were designed to acclimate the students to learning the language and culture of life in the United States.
La Crosse schools had been teaching English to native speakers of other languages — mostly, but not all, Hmong students — for years. Eventually, this program was cut back as the students learned to speak English.
The most recent newcomer centers were established because of that last round of refugees. Now all but one — the center at Central High School — will be eliminated.
That’s good news. That’s progress.
We think it noteworthy to point this out because of the outcry against illegal immigration — which has the unfortunate effect of tarring virtually all immigrants, or all people who speak another language, with the same brush.
It’s interesting to note how many languages are spoken among students in the La Crosse School District.
Their numbers are small, but there are many languages represented — including Spanish, Bulgarian, Mandarin, Russian, Lao and Arabic.
There are elderly Hmong people in La Crosse who don’t speak much English. But that’s not unusual, and the older immigrants rely on their children or grandchildren to help them with language issues.
The fact that the school district is cutting back its extra effort to teach English to new arrivals means that the system is working — and the newcomers have learned the language.
How well would most of us do if we had to be uprooted and sent to a place with a different language and vastly different culture than the one we were used to?
It’s something to think about as we celebrate the success of the last group of Hmong newcomers to our community.
