Framingham Sets Record For ESL Enrollment

FRAMINGHAM, MA — The school year is here and teachers are putting the final touches on their classrooms. While enrollment in Framingham is up across the district, English as a Second Language teachers are bracing for a year of particularly high enrollment, and they're not the only ones. Framingham public schools and the city's Adult ESL program report record numbers of enrollment for incoming students.

In Framingham schools, 2,170 students were registered as "Active English Learners" in the last year. The district enrolled another 337 English learners between this spring and Aug. 23, according to the Language Assessment Office.

For the city's Adult ESL program, the number of applicants has spiked while the number of spots offered remains the same. The director of Framingham Adult ESL Plus, Kevin O'Connor, said there was a line of 798 applicants for this fall semester's evening class at the latest lottery drawing. That's well over 100 more applicants than last spring's 678 applicants. The program could accept only 50 new students to the evening class this semester.

"Our numbers are lower this time — last time we had added two classes," O'Connor said, "However, we had so many people left waiting to place from last time, and because our attrition is so low, there were very few spaces this time."

Framingham ESL officials said this trend isn't unique to the city. Programs in Milford, Waltham and Hudson report similar spikes in enrollment. While enrollment numbers have been on the rise for a few years, ESL officials said it's hard to predict the number of incoming students. Bilingual Department Director Genoveffa Grieci said dealing with increased enrollment is especially tough when the district budget is already set.

"Last year, we saw a lot of returning students who left Framingham and now their families came back for some reason," Grieci said, "But this year and over the summer there's lots of newcomers."

Grieci said the department luckily budgeted in advance for an uptick in enrollment, but without knowing the number, they're still facing a struggle for resource allocation.

"We have to rethink our priorities since the budget is set," Grieci said, adding that Framingham is lucky the district and community support the ESL programs, but increased enrollment always adds a strain to teachers.

For the public schools, Grieci said, it's hard to know what additional resources the department will need, since evaluations of students continue until school starts and newcomers can arrive at any point in the school year.

"It's very individualized, some students may need more tutoring, others may need digital supports, maybe the whole district needs more teachers, we just don't know yet," Grieci said.

The district has 38 ESL teachers at the K-5 level between all of the nine elementary schools, and 16 teachers at the secondary level between the three middle schools and high school.