English Language Learners hit major milestone for Youngstown City School District
According to district coordinator Dennis Yommer, there are approximately 450 English-learning scholars in the Youngstown City School District English Learners program.
Students in the program surpassed its yearly goal of 46.6% with a 51.3% growth rate, the highest success rate in YCSD history.
“About 30% of our district is of Hispanic background,” said Yommer. “But in our program, identified English learners right now of those 450 students, 98% are Hispanic. That means that their native language is Spanish. We do have a couple different dialects, of course. But we also have a Tagalog speaker, a Turkish speaker, a speaker of Urdu, and one Arabic speaker. We’ve got about five total languages in the district right now that we service.”
How the Youngstown district is working to help English learners succeed
Yommer described the district’s investment in helping English learners succeed in the classroom and in extracurricular activities.
“Not all programs are structured the way we are. We’re modern,” said Yommer. “We have certified teachers and also bilingual educational assistants in 14 different building in the district.”
He explained the program’s focus on equity in the classroom while also building language skills and tracking progress for the state.
“The state holds us accountable to how much language growth we get out of a scholar who’s a non-native speaker every year, and there are certain benchmarks, different markers in that,” he said. “Our English learner population is really, really moving and shaking right now. Last year is the first year that our district met its state expectation, we actually surpassed it. So our ELL scholars are killing it in not only in language development, but we’re also seeing a ton of growth and their state scores as well.”
The program coordinators like Yommer devoted a large amount of time this past year to ensure its students and families have access to all district activities (such as E-sports, parent teacher conferences, and family literacy nights).
They want to make sure ELL scholars have access to extracurricular activities regardless of their native language.
Outside of school, the program has partnered with community organizations such as OCCHA to host a series of family nights celebrating language, literature, culture and diversity.
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This story was originally published October 22, 2023 at 4:00 AM.
