Why Should Delaware Care?
The Latino community has grown steadily in Delaware, and multi-language learner students have made up 10% of the total student population in recent years. While some schools in the state have created Spanish immersion programs, the demand has prevented some families from enrolling their children. Las Américas ASPIRA Academy aims to help address this gap and meet the needs of the community through its Georgetown location.
For the first time, Sussex County will have its own Spanish immersion school through the Las Américas ASPIRA Academy’s Georgetown location.
On Jan. 16, then-Secretary of Education Mark Holodick approved the Las Américas ASPIRA Academy’s request for a new charter school in Georgetown. The decision comes after multiple Latino community members expressed a need for an immersion school in Sussex County.
When speaking with community members in the Georgetown area, ASPIRA co- founder Margie López Waite was told that these families want their children to be proficient in English while holding onto their Spanish — they want their children to be biliterate and bilingual.
While some of the Sussex County school districts have immersion programs, the high demand has prevented some parents from being able to enroll their children. For example, applications for the Indian River School District Spanish immersion program are available for students who wish to attend the John M. Clayton, East Millsboro or North Georgetown elementary schools.
Community members hope that ASPIRA can help fill the need for an immersion program with more enrollment available.
ASPIRA Georgetown, like the existing ASPIRA Academy in Newark, will be fully immersive for its students. Students are taught in a “50/50 model” from kindergarten through fifth grade, López Waite said. On their “A days” students stay with their homeroom teacher and learn in one of the two languages for the whole day, and they rotate to their other language teacher on “B days.”
Classes like math, science and social studies are taught in both languages, and students also have English and Spanish language arts classes.
In middle school, they transition to a “continuation model,” where 25% of their instruction is in Spanish and 75% is in English.
The academy aims to open its Georgetown school in the fall of 2026 and will take a phased-in approach, López Waite said. Once open, the school will serve roughly 200 kindergarten through second-grade students.
The school will add a grade level each school year as it continues to renovate the building, and will reach full capacity at 500 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. López Waite will be the head of the school for the first two years before they transition to a new leader during the third year.
How is a new charter school established?
When a group submits their application for a new charter school, they must show that there is a true demand from the community, said Charter Schools Network Executive Director Kendall Massett, who is also a non-voting Charter School Accountability Committee (CSAC) member.
In order to show the demand, the ASPIRA team collected signatures from community members who believed there was a need for the immersion school in Georgetown. Nearly 65% of those families who signed the petition have children who were eligible to attend the school.
Massett gives new charters the opportunity to meet with her before the initial CSAC meeting to ensure there is a real need for the school and that they’re prepared to answer questions about the application. The Delaware Department of Education also provides optional technical assistance in the fall.
Applications for new charters are submitted by Dec. 31 and are checked for accuracy, the application will be rejected if it’s inaccurate or doesn’t have all the required materials.
The next step for new charters is an initial meeting with CSAC, whose members will ask the charter group questions about areas like enrollment, curriculum and financials.
After receiving the application, CSAC members are given a deadline to submit their questions to the charter school ahead of its initial meeting. The charters answer those questions during the initial meeting, if the charter is unable to answer a question they have until their final CSAC meeting to provide an answer.
“If they can’t answer those questions, they did not want to take the time to answer those questions or didn’t have the wherewithal to answer those questions, that’s a big red flag,” Massett said.
CSAC produces an initial report after the initial meeting based on the questions asked and the responses from the charter. The charter then has an initial public hearing for community members and advocates to give public comment.
The committee submits its final questions for the school after the public hearing. During the final meeting, CSAC releases its recommendation on whether to establish the charter and produces a final report.
If necessary, the school will hold a second public hearing.
Although CSAC may produce a recommendation that the school meets the standards for charter operation, the state’s secretary of education makes the ultimate decision and the State Board of Education assents the decision.
The total timeline for the new charter application process is 90 days. This process can also look slightly different for district-authorized charter schools, but the timeline remains the same.
The timeline for ASPIRA Georgetown was shortened because the charter is replicating its Newark school, which was also just renewed by the Delaware Department of Education, Massett said.
‘They need an environment that’s safe’
While all new charter schools have to show evidence of the community’s demand for this school, Massett said she saw more community support for the ASPIRA Georgetown location than she’s seen in the past.
The Hispanic or Latino population has increased by nearly 8% in 33 years, and in 2022, multi-language learners made up 10% of the total student population.
Some advocates have pointed toward ASPIRA Academy as a place where parents in Spanish-speaking households can feel more comfortable communicating with educators in their native language.
“[Parents are] very excited about the opportunity for not only their children to have this experience… they’re looking forward to a situation where they feel more connected to the school, and they feel that they can contribute more to the school, because the school is ready and willing and able to receive them and welcome them in their language,” López Waite said.
Studies have shown that Hispanic parents want to be more involved in their children’s education, and say they would be if more Spanish-fluent educators were present.
Some school districts in Sussex County have tried to effectively communicate with Spanish-speaking parents, but many parents have varying degrees of literacy in their own language, said Jennifer Fuqua, the co-executive director of La Esperanza, an organization that has expressed support for the charter and has helped thousands of immigrants in Delaware.
“Some people are coming to Delaware with limited literacy in their own language, in Spanish, or potentially their native language is a dialect,” Fuqua said. “So it’s very difficult for them to be able to even read, if there is information in Spanish sent home, difficult to read it because of low literacy levels.”
ASPIRA in Newark has already worked to address some of these concerns by creating a Family Resource Program and offering adult literacy classes, nutrition and parenting classes among others. López Waite said they aim to provide those supports in Georgetown as well.
La Plaza, which bolsters Latino businesses in Sussex County, is another organization that has expressed support for ASPIRA Georgetown. La Plaza’s Executive Director Mary Dupont said they’re working with investors to ensure the school is Latino-built, making it the “real deal” for the Latino community.
“This community is like any other community,” Dupont said. “They love to learn, they love to interact, they love to communicate, and they need an environment that’s safe, that respectful, that embraces their culture.”
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