Translation equipment purchased

In a continuing effort to increase participation of non-English speaking parents in school activities, the Blair PTSA improved its translation services through the purchase of simultaneous translation equipment.

In contrast to a person-to-person translation, wherein the speaker must pause after every few sentences to give the translator time to interpret, the simultaneous equipment allows the speaker to talk continuously. It consists of a wireless FM transmitter and 20 receivers. The translator has a headset and microphone, and each person has a wireless receiver with headset. This enables the translator to translate to an audience discreetly, without interrupting the speaker.

The equipment will be used solely by Blair as opposed to the entire Blair cluster or neighboring schools. The total cost of the translation equipment was $3,370. The PTSA has applied for a $2,000 grant with the Carl Freeman Foundation in hopes of covering the costs.

As beneficial as the purchase will be to the community, it is not without problems. "One issue that could be problematic is that we have more than one language among Blair families, and only one of those linguistic minorities could be accommodated at a time with the amount of equipment we're purchasing," said PTSA co-President Fran Rothstein. "But it's a start."

In recent years, Blair has used translation services provided by MCPS. If a member of the school staff requests MCPS translation services for a meeting with a parent, the request must be sent with approximately two weeks notice, according to the MCPS web site. English for Speakers of Other Languages resource teacher and data manager Joseph Bellino believes that Blair's purchase of translation equipment will provide staff members and parents with easier and faster access to translation services that are integral to parent participation.

Establishing communication and outreach between Blair and its non-English speaking community has been an ongoing process and goal for Blair faculty and the PTSA. Rothstein is thrilled that the PTSA now has a Latino family outreach chair and a representative from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She expects great things from the work of these two members in widening the PTSA's outreach in the community. "For several years, the PTSA has been working on a number of different ways to bring the English-speaking and non-English-speaking community together," said Debbie Trent, the parent volunteer who prepared the grant proposal.

One of the PTSA's most recent initiatives was implementing the five-session "Conquista Tus Sueños" program created in cooperation with Fernando Cruz-Villalba of the Hispanic Alliance of Montgomery County and Carlos Devis, an educational consultant. It was provided to the Blair cluster in order to empower Spanish-speaking parents by providing them with information about the school system and to give parents the opportunity to be more active in their children's education. The success and popularity of the program prompted Board of Education President Patricia O'Neill to promise that "Conquista" would continue this year.

The language assistance services already provided by MCPS were addressed in a September press release presented to the Board of Education by Cindy Kerr, the Montgomery County Council of Parent Teacher Associations (MCCPTA) president. "The need for more and better translation services is a critical element of improving communications with non-English speaking and limited English-proficient families," Kerr said. She stated that parent participation plays an integral role in a student's academic achievement because "student success depends upon parent involvement."

Trent agreed with Kerr and believes that it is important to have parents not feel alienated from their children's educational process. "The language gap should not be an impediment to participation," she said.