Long Branch Schools Employee Looks To Bridge Gap Between School, Home, Community

Nelyda Perez has devoted her life to helping students from every culture succeed in and out of the classrooms of the Long Branch School District.

Perez, 39, of Hazlet, recently took on a new role as District Coordinator for Special Services for Long Branch Public Schools. She had previously served as Long Branch Academy Principal for the School of Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Her new job will include coordinating bilingual programs and working with other departments to ensure that all students receive the best education possible.

As a Hispanic woman, Perez said it is her passion to help the bilingual population.

"My passion has always been to help others, primarily the underprivileged, so I can advocate for them and connect them with the system," Perez said.

Growing up in Spanish-speaking household helped teach her about the importance of understanding different languages and cultures from an early age.

"My parents spoke to me in Spanish and spoke to them in English," Perez said. "I want to be proficient in both."

Upon completing her undergraduate program in Family and Child Studies at Montclair State University in 1994, Perez began working for the Long Branch Head Start Program. She said her duties in the program, which no longer exists, were to educated parents on enrollment and get children enrolled in the district's pre-school program. She said this job helped introduce her to the community.

"I fell in love with the community because of its diversity and culture," she said.

Perez later attended Rutgers University, while working full time as a social worker for Horizon Blue Cross-Blue Shield, and graduated with a Masters in Social Work in 2001.

She then returned to the Long Branch School District as a bilingual social worker in the child study team. After four years she decided to go to The College of New Jersey, where she received a Masters in Educational Leadership. She then took her job as Academy Principal for four years before taking her new position.

Perez says she feels a sense of urgency to strengthen the schools bilingual and English as a second language (ESL) programs by providing parent workshops to "make stronger connections with parents on what children are being taught in the classroom, the standards and expectations their child needs to meet and how their child is being assessed."

"The biggest challenge is educating parents and empowering them to become more involved in their child’s education and stay involved," Perez said. "We need to continue parent involvement all the way through (high school) to improve their education and make plans for them after they graduate high school and show them what their options are."

She said she hopes that more parent forums will help get parents invested in their children's lives.

The Long Branch School District is unique because one third of the population is Caucasian (which includes Portuguese and Brazilian students), another third is Hispanic, and the final third is African American. 

Perez said the percentage of these students who are bilingual is between 50-60 percent.

There are approximately 5,400 students enrolled in the district and about 540 receive bilingual or ESL services, meaning that English is a second language for them, according to Perez.

Because of this, all of the school's information goes out in three languages (Portuguese, Spanish and English).

"So when I send out letters and do the translation with the staff it's in a generic dialect that everyone can understand," Perez said.

Perez said that because of this diversity, it can sometimes cause problems between students.

"A way to resolve that is to empower students to speak out," Perez said. "If something is being done where they feel they are being discriminated against, they need to speak out against it, and I’m here for that too."

"I don’t think it’s happening, but I’m not naïve to the fact that there are individuals who have different opinions," she continued. "It’s anywhere and everywhere, and there are event adults like that."

Perez said she feels that the more students from different cultures interact, the easier it will make it for students to feel accepted.

"If our bilingual students are mainstreamed more with other students, they’ll practice the English language more and they will feel more comfortable learning from others," Perez said. "On the other hand, students that are English-speakers will learn more from them and understand the culture as well."

She hopes that her new position will help all students learn from each other and she said she hopes to instill the same beliefs she has taught to her own children.

"I’m really passionate about what I’m going to be doing," she said. "It’s a love that I have and it's something that my family believes in and I instill with my own kids."