Riley asks how NYC prioritizes languages and access barriers

And how does the city determine which languages to prioritize when creating or expanding multilingual programs?

Good afternoon.

So we want to make it accessible to all families, right?

So we prioritize based on the community demand.

We prioritize based on seat availability.

And we also consider what the geographic location of the needs are.

When we consider opening a dual language program, we take a look at those different factors to make a decision.

But ultimately, our goal is always to expand the dual language classroom so that all families have access to that type of model for their multilingual learners.

And could you share any barriers that will prevent any families from accessing these programs that you've seen?

Well, what we will not make sure that we consider are simplifying our family's access to language and language support.

So what we currently have in place now are our opportunity.

for the application to be available in the 13 languages that support the 99% of students and the languages they speak at home.

In addition to that, we consider what would be

what would be critical family-facing communications.

So we have our internal unit that supports that work.

Our interpretation and our translation unit helps to subsidize some of those resources for us.

And we also have partner vendors that take care of that work for our CBOs and our family child care networks.