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PR wary of integration funding cuts [UPDATED]
Published 9:55am Tuesday, January 17, 2012 Updated 11:56am Tuesday, January 17, 2012The Pelican Rapids Public School district, which has close to 25 percent of its students living in homes where English is the second language, is in danger of losing integration funding from the state legislature.
This session, Legislative leaders sent the integration funding to a task force to examine its effectiveness.
“Our school district has seen definite benefits as a result of the dollars we receive from integration money,” said Pelican Rapids School Supt. Deborah Wanek. “However, larger schools such as those in the Twin Cities have not been able to show how the money has benefited them.”
Larger schools, obviously, are the larger recipients of the integration dollars.
“Right now we receive a little over $133,000, and we have very specific uses for these dollars to meet our student needs,” said Wanek. “It would be a great loss if this money is taken away from our school district.”
Pelican Rapids is part of the Multi-District Cultural Collaborative that also includes school districts in Fergus Falls, Barnesville, Hawley, Lake Park-Audubon, Perham and Underwood. All of the involved districts, with the exception of Pelican Rapids, have a minority enrollment of roughly five percent or less.
The purpose of the collaborative is to increase cultural awareness by crossing district lines and working together in hopes of learning from each other. This is part of a state-mandated program.
Students attending school in Pelican Rapids study side-by-side with people of different cultures. English, Vietnamese, Somalian, Spanish and other languages fill the hallways of Pelican Rapids High School and Viking Elementary every day.
As members of the collaborative, students in districts with far less diversity than Pelican Rapids have an opportunity to get to know students who are different than the majority of their classmates.
It isn’t uncommon for immigrants who don’t speak English to work at West Central Turkeys, the turkey plant in Pelican Rapids owned by Jennie-O. Once they have a better grasp of the English language, they may move to larger cities where more jobs are available.
Joan Ellison, a volunteer who has worked with cultural diversity programs in Pelican Rapids, said it’s important to teach kids to be open to other people.
“Other peoples’ stories are significant,” she said. “Those stories can make a difference in how those people feel.”
Ellison emphasizes, durng talks at area schools, that understanding and accepting people who are different is a theme of cultural diversity classes.
Fergus Falls School District 544 has entered into a cultural diversity iPad reading pilot program with Pelican Rapids Public Schools. The program is specifically designed to assist students who are part of the Fergus Falls Area Learning Center and other students who take part in independent study.
Many students in both Fergus Falls and Pelican Rapids need to improve their reading skills, and the iPad program is seen as a big help in that effort. The iPad is a computer option designed as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals and web content.
