District 15 provides bilingual parent liaisons
By 8 a.m. most mornings, there's already a line outside their office door. They're also booked three or four nights a week.
Now, they're expanding the scope of their services outward from Palatine and beginning to work with families in Rolling Meadows.
They are the bilingual parent liaisons that District 15 and Partners for Our Communities team up to provide for the immigrant students and families in the District 15 community. They are Violeta Audelo-Solano, Laura Ramirez, and Ana Flores, and - along with Jazlynn Halloran, the district's bilingual outreach facilitator - they keep quite the busy schedules.
Their job is to foster and sustain communication between schools and bilingual families throughout the D15 community. They do so, in part, by leading the district's Bilingual Parent Advisory Committee and teaching classes for parents at the Edgebrook Community Center and the Winston Campus Junior High Community School.
They also attend schools' family literacy nights, and regularly meet with principals to assess the needs of and provide support for each school's bilingual population.
But the liaisons' day-to-day efforts are truly a mixed bag, as they're available to help newly arrived families get situated in their new schools and acclimated to their new homes in just about any way imaginable.
In addition to helping bilingual families navigate the school system, the liaisons aim to connect these families to a variety of resources that can help them secure housing, pay their bills, get medical care, find food pantries and clothing closets, or even enroll in classes at the POC or Harper College.
"Our bilingual parent liaisons are becoming so popular, so in demand, because they are such an invaluable resource," said Cheryl Wolfel, Ed.D., executive director for Second Language Programs.
"They are all parents, they all live in the District 15 community, and they are all very active in our schools, so they know our neighborhoods, and they know the students and families we serve.
And, of course, our liaisons also know the language and the culture - even the experience of being a new bilingual family in a community - so there's a trust and a comfort level that often develops between our bilingual families and our liaisons that allows them to directly discuss certain concerns parents might not mention to their teachers or principals for fear that something might get lost in translation.
"That's what makes our parent liaisons the heartbeat of our bilingual communities here in District 15," said Dr. Wolfel.
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