Miami-Dade County will start a new school year in the coming days, which will include more than 22,000 new students who are children of immigrants who have arrived in the territory in recent months.
This figure has generated some concern, as the county’s educational institutions face new challenges.
According to Cuban-American José Dotres, superintendent of the Miami-Dade School Board, the schools in the area were below capacity for many years, but this changed due to the large number of people who came to apply for residence in Florida.
The official indicated during an interview with Telemundo 51 that one of the main problems they are facing now is the shortage of teachers, which is why, for the preparation of the 2023-2024 academic year, they have had to hire some 600 new teachers, however, there is still a shortfall of 300 that will be needed to handle this new number of students.
Similarly, the Cuban-American indicated that one of the obstacles they must overcome is the language barrier, since many of the immigrants do not speak English.
For this, the educational authorities have planned the organization of several accelerated learning programs, with which it is hoped to be able to provide the necessary linguistic tools to these students.
Dotres explained that another of the priorities is that of abuse or Bullying, since the children of migrants are often the object of ridicule in American schools. To do this, they have begun training counselors, mental health workers, and teachers, while talking to other students about “the importance of treating each other with respect.”
Miami-Dade has more than 331,000 students in its public schools, making it the third largest school district in the country. In 2022, more than 14,800 students from other countries were enrolled, something for which there was a budget of 8,000 million dollars.
Schools in Miami-Dade generally do not charge tuition fees for those students who reside within the school district, including local students and those who qualify to attend public schools in accordance with district regulations.
