Charleroi Area School District sees influx of immigrant students, seeks state financial help

CHARLEROI, Pa. — Charleroi historically was a mill town that felt the impact of a shrinking industry; but the last two years, this town’s population is exploding again.

“I speak French, Creole, Portuguese, Spanish and English,” said Kervens Lerantis.

Lerantis is only in the fourth grade. He’s just one of 172 English Language Learners (ELL) in the Charleroi Area School District. Many of whom never spoke the language before stepping foot in Washington County.

“The biggest challenge that every Haitian has is they don’t know what you are saying. For you, it’s like blah blah blah, you don’t say nothing you are just sitting in the class listening and you just don’t understand,” said Joeby Charlecin who’s in the 11th grade and moved to the area from Haiti.

The immigrant population has grown in this community by over 2,000% in just the last two years, bringing new challenges for the school district.

“Just in the last year we had over $400,000, we had to add two ELL teachers, an ELL coach for our teachers, a registrar, an interpreter,” said Dr. Ed Zelich who’s the Charleroi Superintendent.

With the growth, the district is looking at another $300,000 on top of that next year. This is the highest-taxed district in the county. Dr. Zelich said increasing taxes isn’t an option, so he’s looking to the state for help.

“We will take any help we can get, but obviously we would love more interpreters, more aides in the classroom. We’d love more technology that could help the students understand in English as well as their home language,” said Elaine Ondrish who’s a Kindergarten Teacher at Charleroi.

So far, the state has only offered after-school and summer tutoring, which Zelich said doesn’t even scratch the surface. The buildings are running out of space, forcing some Pre-K classes to leave the building and classroom size to grow where nearly half the lower grades are already full of multiple languages.

Yet through it all, this district is embracing the change and welcoming diversity to its community.

“We have four different languages in my room and as we are learning the numbers in English one of the little girls is teaching the numbers in Spanish to her other friends and they are excited and love that they are bridging the gap. They don’t see a difference,” Ondrish said.

The district has brought the PA Department of Education in and local lawmakers, but still can’t seem to get the financial help they need. The superintendent told Channel 11 he’s going to continue knocking on their doors because he knows the growth is not stopping here.

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