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Kindergartners in a multilingual classroom at Portland’s Riverton Elementary listen to teacher Cindy Soule during class. Incoming Superintendent James Morse lauds the integration of multilingual students into regular classes, though multilingual education funding is languishing.

enlarge John Ewing/Staff Photographer

Kindergarten students Dante Tocci, left, and Hanid Muse play a math skills game in a multilingual classroom at Portland’s Riverton Elementary School. Forty-nine languages are spoken in the city’s schools.

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James Morse

Graphic: Portland's growing multilingual student population

ABOUT THIS SERIES

MONDAY: Portland's incoming superintendent James Morse plans to work on reducing the district's dropout rate, something that has been a personal issue for him as an educator since he dropped out of Portland High School when he was a junior.

TODAY: Portland's multilingual student population is growing, and it's one area where the incoming superintendent has little experience.

WEDNESDAY: A look at the administrative, financial and facilities challenges Portland's new schools chief faces when he takes the job in July.

MEET THE NEW GUY

THE PORTLAND SCHOOL Committee has scheduled several public gatherings to introduce James Morse to the community before he becomes superintendent in July. All are at 6 p.m.

APRIL 28: Moore Middle School, 171 Auburn St.

MAY 8: Presumpscot Elementary School, 69 Presumpscot St.

MAY 12: King Middle School, 92 Deering Ave.

MAY 21: Deering High School, 370 Stevens Ave.

 

Second in a series

PORTLAND — The Portland School Committee hired James Morse because, members said, he has the broad educational and leadership experience needed to run Maine's largest school district.

But never, in 33 years as a teacher and administrator in Maine public schools, has Morse experienced anything like Portland's growing multilingual student population.

For the last 12 years he has been superintendent of School Administrative District 47, encompassing the rural central Maine towns of Oakland, Belgrade, Sidney and Rome. Most of his 2,568 students are white, and fewer than 1 percent are learning to speak English as a secondary language.

When Morse becomes Portland's superintendent in July, he takes over a district where 21 percent of 6,989 students are immigrants or children of recent immigrants. Forty-nine world languages are spoken in the city's public schools, including Swahili, Dinka and Farsi. Students hail from far-flung places like Somalia, Sudan, Russia, Brazil, Albania and Iraq.

It's new territory that poses a challenge for Morse, but it's one he's eager to take on. He promises to bring a fresh perspective to a facet of Portland schools that he and others believe is an untapped community asset in an increasingly global economy.

"There will be a learning curve, no doubt," Morse said. "For a while, I will be relying on my staff to get me up to speed. But I will be looking for new ways to improve our multilingual program."

Morse has already met with Grace Valenzuela, multilingual program director, and toured multilingual classrooms at Reiche and Riverton elementary schools. He said he was impressed that Portland now integrates multilingual students into regular classrooms as soon as possible to maximize their learning opportunities.

"They're learning with their playmates and their peers," Morse said.

Portland's multilingual program began in the early 1980s, when southeast Asian refugees started coming to Maine's largest city, Valenzuela said. Its staff and students initially were concentrated in Reiche Elementary, King Middle and Portland High schools, on the downtown peninsula.

Now, the multilingual program has 1,479 students and a staff of 70 full-time positions, including 43 teachers, 20 educational technicians and three community outreach specialists. They can be found in each of Portland's eight elementary schools, three middle schools and three high schools on the mainland.

Enrollment in Portland's multilingual programs has increased 62 percent in the last six years, school officials said, with recent spikes in the number of students who speak Spanish or Arabic as their primary language.

The district now has 182 Latin-American students and 55 new Iraqi students, and an infusion of Burmese refugees is expected in the coming months, Valenzuela said.

While enrollment has increased, staffing dedicated to multilingual education has dropped 15 percent in the last six years, school officials said. The program is on track to lose five full-time positions in 2009-10, despite having a nearly level-funded budget of $4 million.

In the future, Valenzuela said, she hopes to increase after-school and Web-based educational opportunities for multilingual students so they can extend their learning beyond the six hours they spend in school each day.

At the same time, she sees Portland's immigrant students as a ready example for native-born students of the growing need to be multilingual in the global marketplace.

While most immigrant students must learn to speak English, and some of them had little formal education before they got here, many of them have grown up speaking several different languages.

"I would like to see us strengthen our overall curriculum to better incorporate a world understanding based on the students we have right here in our...