Spanish speakers ask school district for translation services at meetings and events

Spanish-speaking community members are calling on the Riverhead Board of Education to increase language accessibility at school board meetings and during other interactions.

The request came primarily from members of the education committee for the immigrant Center of Alliance, Solidarity, and Accompaniment (CASA) and the Rural and Migrant Ministry, who raised the concern during the Jan. 23 school board meeting. 

“I understand the importance of a parent to be involved in the school activities of our children,” Emilse Hernandez, a parent whose child will soon attend kindergarten in the district, said to the board through a translator. “But we would only be able to get involved if there was a better communication between the parents and the teachers.”

During that night’s meeting, interim district clerk Rodney Parrish announced — in English — that Spanish language translation services were available. The meeting would be translated in real time through headsets available in the back of the high school auditorium, where the board’s meeting took place. 

It was the first time in recent years that the school district has notified the community of such a service. The announcement came former school board candidate Kimberly Wilder at the Jan. 10 board meeting spoke of the need to make the meetings accessible to Spanish-speaking parents. 

Sixty-three percent of students enrolled in the school district are Hispanic or Latino, according to State Education Department statistics. English language learners make up 37% of the district enrolled student population, according to the data, which does not identify the students’ primary language.

Translation services were notability absent during a public hearing on a proposed expansion to the Riverhead Charter School on Oct. 12, 2021. Many parents in the large crowd that night were Spanish speakers. Then-school board president Laurie Downs said that night there were no translation services available, responding to one parent who shouted from the audience asking the board whether the meeting could be translated. The charter school board’s treasurer, who attended the public hearing, ended up translating for one Spanish-speaking parent who addressed the school board during the hearing.

Downs, who was on the school board from 2016 until spring of last year, said in an interview this week the school board had an employee to translate for Spanish-speaking parents while she was on the board. But that likely stopped during the coronavirus pandemic when everything went virtual, she said, and seemingly never returned. 

Downs said the district purchased the headset equipment during the tenure of former Superintendent Aurelia Henriquez, who had the top job from 2017 to 2020, and pushed to have interpreters at the meetings. 

Current school district officials said a translator has been present for recent school board meetings, but acknowledged the service has not been announced, either in meeting notices or at the meetings themselves. 

“The big problem has been not letting the public know about the translation services that are available,” Board of Education President Colin Palmer said.

Palmer, who as president presides over the board meetings, said he was unaware that a translator was present until he was told of it by Interim Superintendent Cheryl Pedisich.

Pedisich said in an interview that she was told by several district staff members that the translation service has been available since the beginning of the school year. Pedisich, who joined the district as interim superintendent in October, would not disclose to a reporter who provided her that information.

Pedisich said the translator at school board meetings is a bilingual district employee. 

The board is going to make the translation services known at board meetings, Palmer said. The availability will be added to meeting notices after there is a new permanent district clerk. He said if the school board starts getting requests for documents in different languages, the board will supply them to the public. 

The school district publishes most of its virtual letters to the community, all of its quarterly newsletters, and notices of district elections and budget votes, in both English and Spanish. 

“This isn’t something that we don’t think about. We’re constantly working on this every day,” Palmer said.

There have also been problems with translation services outside of school board meetings, Noemi Sanchez, the coordinator of the Rural and Migrant Ministry, told the board at its last meeting. She said she had to help a Spanish-speaking parent who was not given an interpreter when called to speak to a school official. 

“There’s a lot of students that only speak Spanish in this district and they need the translation and the interpretation all the time, not only sometimes,” Sanchez said.