Chapter 4: Transforming School District Policy for Emergent Bilinguals in New Immigrant Destinations: The Role of Community-Based Organizations

Over the last two decades, increasing immigration has shifted the cultural and linguistic makeup of communities across the United States, particularly in emerging gateway states with little history of ethnic or racial diversity (Wortham, Murillo, & Hamann, 2002). In these locales, school districts that have typically enrolled White, monolingual students are experiencing unprecedented growth in their immigrant and emergent bilingual student populations. This chapter explores one school district’s response to shifting demographics in the Northeastern United States. Specifically, we show how, despite a normative and political environment hostile towards the new immigrant population, members of a community-based organization served as boundary spanners who facilitated communication between community members and school district leaders, thereby encouraging more equity-minded policies for their growing emergent bilingual population. Our findings have implications for the coalition building necessary to support and sustain transformative school district policies, or those that enable more inclusive school cultures, improved learning supports, and enhanced engagement with emergent bilingual students and families.