The Hamilton County Department of Education will be in charge of providing the school system with interpreters for their Spanish-speaking students registering for the 2019-2020 school year.
The Department of Education made this transition of responsibility with the hiring of Maricela ‘Mardi’ Leonard, the district interpreter for the county.
Ms. Leonard’s focus is to provide supplemental language support to the district for the Spanish-speaking community, which makes up approximately 15 percent of Chattanooga’s current population.
In past years, La Paz Chattanooga has served the district by providing nearly 100 volunteers each year to assist in school registration for Hispanic/Latino families.
“Dr. [Marsha] Drake will be releasing detailed information about how the district supports non-English speaking parents/families with our Spring registration information packet and press releases,” said Dr. Julie Legg, director of ESOL, RTI2, and World Language Programs for HCDE.
"We sincerely appreciate the support that La Paz has provided to Hamilton County Schools over the past several years."
Based on a 2013 report by HCDE, the district is the fifth largest ESOL district after Davidson, Rutherford, Knox counties and Memphis City schools.
“We will continue to serve the Latino/Hispanic student population in Hamilton County in other capacities throughout the school year. We are very happy with the district’s decision to increase their ESOL-serving capacity, and congratulate them on this next step,” said Stacy Johnson, executive director of La Paz Chattanooga.
"La Paz encourages past volunteers to continue their service to our student population by serving with the district on their official registration day, however the organization will host an unofficial school registration event before the 2019-2020 school year begins," officials said.