FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. — With a student population of some 55,000, the Forsyth County School District is ranking beside its larger Metro Atlanta neighbors for its growing percentage of English learning students.
At a Board of Education work session April 9, Associate Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Lee Anne Rice shared an update about how the district supports its English learning students.
“We currently have students who come from 118 different countries of birth, speak 68 different primary home languages, and we have more than 2,000 immigrant students,” Rice said.
Rice said roughly 5 percent of the Forsyth County student body are considered immigrant students, which the district classifies as those who have been enrolled in U.S. schools for less than 36 months.
While immigrant students in Forsyth County Schools have traditionally been from Mexico or India, Rice said the district is seeing significant growth in students hailing from Southeast Asia, South America and southern Europe near Turkey, Ukraine and Russia.
From 2018 to 2023, Rice said the school district’s English learning population grew from 9.4 to 13.1 percent.
“Elementary schools had the largest growth of English learners because they come in, they learn the language very young, and they exit as they get to middle school and high school,” she said.
But, Rice said there are now “huge populations” of students aged 16 to 19 who are enrolling with no educational experience in the past five to seven years.
“When we go to state-level meetings, we actually fall into the category with English learners with DeKalb, Hall, Gwinnett, Cobb,” Rice said. “Even though we’re much smaller than they are, our demographic population of English learners puts us in a different category.”
The DeKalb County School District serves more than 16,000 English learning students…
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