New York City public schools will soon be required to translate many official messages to families into three more languages other than English, expanding the total to 12.
The school system’s oversight body, the Panel for Educational Policy, voted Wednesday to approve the additional languages — Albanian, Uzbek and Ukrainian — citing the need for equity and family engagement. The panel also passed new regulations prohibiting schools from relying on students to translate during meetings where student achievement or conduct is discussed.
The city previously required schools to translate official materials into Spanish, Chinese, Bengali, Russian, Urdu, Arabic, Haitian Creole, Korean and French. The new requirements will take effect in the fall.
“Every parent deserves a meaningful opportunity to participate in their child’s education, regardless of the language they speak,” Cristina Meléndez, deputy chancellor for the city’s education department, said in a statement.
The city’s public schools are enormously diverse, with more than 150 languages spoken by students’ families. The vast majority of families whose home language is not English speak Spanish, followed by Chinese and Arabic, according to the city Department of Education, but many other tongues are spoken, including rarer languages and dialects.
Information requiring translation includes registration, applications, enrollment, discipline and special education services. Under education department guidelines, individual schools are responsible for finding a way to communicate with all families, including those who do not speak one of the languages used in official messages.
Translation has been a perennial challenge for city schools and has become more pressing since 2022 as they absorbed some 50,000 migrant students. Teachers often turn to translation apps on their phones to communicate with newcomer students or rely on bilingual students in their classes to translate.
In addition to Spanish-speaking migrants, schools have seen an increase in students from countries affected by war in Africa, as well as Russia and Ukraine, education officials have said.
Earlier this year, the city settled a 2019 lawsuit alleging a “systemic and longstanding failure” to adequately translate and inform parents who are not fluent in English. As part of the settlement, the education department agreed to expand training and materials for interpretation and language access. The suit was brought by parents of students with disabilities who reported struggling to advocate for their children in evaluations and meetings.
“It’s been a long time effort to make sure all our communities are seen and met in terms of language access,” local parent and education advocate Tazin Azad said. “Language access is basically a matter of inclusion but then it can also be a matter of safety and security.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Azad said, parent “liaisons” took it upon themselves to create informal translation networks to ensure families had key information about safety protocols, remote learning and the logistics of school closures and reopenings.
“These were essentially parents from public schools who were using their own capacity to provide translation in real time,” she said.
