Students whose parents or guardians are limited in their English proficiency are at the mercy of the school to equalize their learning experiences. Research shows that students thrive when their parents understand and participate in the education of their children. To that end, these students deserve to have their LEP parents or guardians notified of school policies, events, programs, and resources in a language that they understand. By empowering LEP families to contribute to the learning outcomes of their children, schools ensure that no child is left behind.

Schools are required to develop and implement a clearly defined and measurable program that identifies all limited English proficient (LEP) families, even those whose children are proficient in English. Once identified, a plan to meet the communication needs for each LEPs family’s must then be documented and made available to the staff. Any program, service, or activity that is communicated to English-speaking parents must be also be conveyed to LEP families in their language, even when such languages are among those of lesser diffusion (rare).

Many parents or guardians naturally rely on their children, who often speak English better, to interpret for them or translate notes that are sent home from teachers. As one would expect, a note sent home to advise the parent or guardian about a child’s poor performance is likely not going to be translated faithfully by the same student whose performance is questionable. This conflict of interest happens on a daily basis, perhaps even in your local school system. Thus, by providing professional language interpreters and translating relevant documents, schools help parents and guardians to participate in the education of their children in a meaningful way.

Aside from being the right thing to do, compliance to title VI of the 1964  civil rights act requires that all public schools provide language interpretation and translation services to all parents and guardians who need these services. Every effort must be made to ensure that only qualified interpreters and translators are used to communicate with LEP parents or guardians. Schools should not rely on or ask students, siblings, friends, or untrained school staff to translate or interpret for parents or guardians. To help schools meet compliance in this area, Volatia assesses all internal resources, such as bilingual staff, and includes those who qualify in the deployment of the language access program.