‘Not a side budget anymore’: English learner costs surge in public schools

By Aaron Gifford | The Epoch Times

Federal and state laws mandate accommodations for all English language learners in public schools.

Despite federal effectiveness at curbing illegal immigration, most states still allocate extra money for students learning English, regardless of whether they are here legally.

All states apply a per-pupil funding formula for local districts. Above that base rate, 47 states and the District of Columbia provide additional money for English language learners.

The expanded rates range from $904 to $16,161 per student if that pupil is also low-income, according to the Learning Policy Institute, which estimates there are more than 5 million English learners across K–12 public education.

That includes nearly half the student population in the Dallas Independent School District.

President Donald Trump’s recent delay of $6.8 billion in federal education aid for a variety of programs, including Title III English language acquisition and migrant education, alarmed schools with significant populations of undocumented students or the children of illegal immigrants.

The money was released later by the administration.

Those special services for children who speak a different language at home remain a sacred cow in the approaching school year, despite budget deficits, a review of several district spending plans indicates.

The Chicago Public School district has a $734 million deficit, according to its budget documents.

Last year, the district was forced to cut staffing and programs by $197 million, but English language instruction remained unscathed, according to budget documents on its website.

The superintendent’s 2025 budget message said the spending plan “increases staffing to support priority student groups, including special education students, English learners, students in temporary living situations, and students who are chronically absent or truant.”

The Chicago district’s Office of Multilingual and Multicultural Education serves about 88,000 students, or 27 percent of the total enrollment.

Services for recent arrivals to the United States, plus dual and world-language instructions, are also part of that office.

Its allocations increased from $54.5 million in 2023 to $77.09 million this past school year as staffing was bolstered from 415 positions to 541, budget documents showed.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, where 20 percent of the student population is still learning English, ended this academic year with a $1 billion deficit.

Even though the district anticipates its Title III funding will be cut in half next year, its English learner program will still get a $2.2 million boost, and three full-time positions will be added to its staff of 202 full-time employees, according to budget documents on the district website.

New York City Public Schools served 174,014 English learners in 2023, nearly 70 percent of whom are native Spanish speakers, an increase of nearly 20,000 students from four years prior, according to the district website.

It received $34 million in federal Title III and migrant education grants in 2025. Budget documents did not indicate financial shortfalls ahead of the coming academic year.

That district’s per-pupil spending rate exceeds $32,000.

The New York State Department of Education website breaks down its New York City funding by neighborhoods or geographic districts, not the entire district.

The largest state grant for English-learning students last year, $4.28 million, went to Brooklyn Geographic District 20, while schools in a different Brooklyn neighborhood received $2.75 million.

Under the same program, New York State provided Newburgh Enlarged City School District, a low-income district in the Hudson Valley region, with nearly $300,000.

More than half of the district’s 11,557 students are Hispanic, and 14 percent of them are still learning English, according to the district website.

Newburgh eliminated 97 positions in the 2024-2025 budget, but its 23-member English language teaching staff remained intact.

For the upcoming year, the district cut five teaching positions—science, social studies, art, and two in math—but it added an “ENL” (English as a New Language) position, a bilingual social studies teacher, and a bilingual science teacher, according to budget documents.

In testimony to members of Congress last year, Julie Kirchner, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the cost of educating illegal immigrants or their children is about $70 billion annually.

“This is a man-made crisis,” she said, noting that illegal immigrants contribute about $31 billion in taxes but cost about $150 billion for food, shelter, medical care, education, and other services.

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