Rural N.C. To Get Aid for LEP-Student Influx

By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo

A decade ago, the only immigrants in Lee County, N.C., aside from some transplanted Northerners, were a small group of mi grant farm workers and their families. With only a couple dozen language-minority students--mostly Hispanic children whose parents moved with the cycle of harvests throughout the South--the 8,000-student school system in the state's smallest county gave little thought to providing special language services.

But an explosion in the population of non-English-speaking residents over the past few years--lured to the rural community in central North Carolina by the strong economy and an abundance of low-skill jobs--has made such services essential in the district's 13 schools.