- A bill that makes $500,000 available for schools that had a 75% increase in students learning English advanced Tuesday for a floor vote.
- Jordan School District saw a 108% increase in students learning English compared to the previous three-year average.
- Funds could be used to train teachers, hire aides and obtain other resources for English language learners.
In early January, six students arrived at Riverton High School ready for their first day of class but unable to speak English fluently.
Educators sprung into action, working to integrate the new students. But the difficulty of helping students who don’t know English was exacerbated by having to make rearrangements midway through the school year.
“One of the struggles is clearly the language barrier, not just for the kids, but the parents as well,” said Glen Varga, the assistant principal at Riverton High School. “So we take them, and the hard part about it is we’ve got to meet them where they are.”
The number of English language learners in Utah has spiked in recent years, leaving schools scrambling and spreading teachers thin as schools attempt to accommodate surges in immigration without additional resources.
Since Varga started working at Riverton High School three years ago, the number of English language learners at the school has jumped from around 25 to 140, he said — an increase of roughly 460%.
This legislative session, House Education Chair Candice Pierucci, R-Riverton, is hoping to hand schools like Riverton High School a lifeline.
What would Pierucci’s bill do?
On Tuesday, Pierucci’s English Learner Amendments, HB42, received a unanimous recommendation from its House committee to advance to a floor vote.
The bill would make $500,000 in leftover weighted pupil unit funds for “at-risk” students available to split between school districts experiencing a significant increase in English language learner enrollment.
In an application to the Utah State Board of Education, an eligible school district would need to show that one of their schools had a 75% increase in students learning English compared to the previous three-year average, and that the school lacks the funds to support the increase.
The bill defines a student learning English as a student who receives the very lowest score on an English language proficiency test that is given in the first 30 days of school to all students whose parents indicate that English is not their primary language.
The emergency funds would be prioritized based on which schools had the greatest increase in enrollment of students learning English.
The funds could be appropriately used for training teachers, reducing class sizes, hiring classroom aides and obtaining other resources for English language learners.
“This is an opportunity for us to make sure we’re getting the resources right to the front line of education, which is to the teachers,” Pierucci said.
Why is emergency funding needed?
Data from legislative analysts shows that several Utah school districts experienced large increases in English language learner enrollment over the last year.
Jordan School District, which includes Riverton and Herriman, saw a 108% increase in students learning English compared to the previous three-year average.
Alpine District saw a 139% increase, Provo District saw a 115% increase and Davis District saw a 82% increase, according to the analysis which compared 2024 data to an average from 2021, 2022 and 2023.
This increase coincided with an unprecedented wave of migrants into the United States during the Biden administration.
Between 2020 and 2023, the number of new immigration proceedings filed in Salt Lake County courts, which can be a good indicator of how many asylum seeking migrants have entered an area, increased by 1,600%, from 752 in 2020, to 12,840 in 2023, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse data.
In June, during a presentation to the committee, Jordan School District Superintendent Anthony Godfrey said his schools have seen a 92.6% increase in students who need to learn English over the last six years, growing from roughly 2,300 to 4,500 students.
Schools in Herriman have seen the largest increase in the district, with some schools going from fewer than 1% English language learners to nearly 12% in a few years.
The number of students with very low English fluency in the district has also spiked over the last two years, from around 750 in 2022 to more than 2,000 in 2024.
Jordan District Associate Superintendent Michael Anderson said several of the schools in his district would qualify for emergency funding under the 75% threshold outlined in Pierucci’s bill.
Support and pushback
Anderson spoke in favor of Pierucci’s bill during Tuesday’s hearing. In an interview with the Deseret News, Anderson said his school district hopes to use the funds to help students learning English just like they would help any other student.
“We have a responsibility to teach every student who walks through our doors, regardless of their circumstances, regardless of their home language and we take that responsibility seriously,” Anderson said.
Several pro-public education lobbyists spoke in favor of the bill on Tuesday, saying that the emergency funds wouldn’t just help English language learners, but would actually benefit all students as teachers receive the resources they need.
Many of these education proponents used their public comment to argue that other schools with large English language learner populations, like Salt Lake and Granite, should have access to emergency funds even though they haven’t had large increases in recent years.
Some conservative Utahns have pushed back against the bill, saying that by increasing resources for English language learners, the state is continuing to make itself an attractive place for migrants to come.
“HB42 begins to expose just how much Utah’s magnet state status, that encourages foreign nationals to settle in Utah, is costing Utah taxpayers,” said Dr. Ronald Mortensen, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a retired Foreign Service officer.
Before a substitute bill was adopted on Tuesday, Pierucci’s bill originally made up to $5 million in Enrollment Growth Contingency Program funds available for school districts where a school experienced a 50% increase in students learning English.
Before the bill received a unanimous bipartisan recommendation, the potential price tag was reduced to $500,000 and the threshold was increased to 75%.