Residents tell board ELLs strain classrooms; superintendent says district provides resources

Members of the public told the Northwest Allen County Schools board on May 18 that growing numbers of English language learners (ELL) are stressing classrooms and lowering instructional quality.

John Ferry, a Fort Wayne resident and volunteer with Safe Heritage Indiana, said state spending on educating children who cannot speak English has risen and described classroom strain from mixed‑ability groupings and peer translation. “Indiana now spends 1,500,000,000 every year at the state level educating, children who cannot speak English,” Ferry said, and added that bilingual peer interpreters and mixed‑ability classrooms can lead to a “decline in quality of education.”

Dalton Kimes, also speaking as a Safe Heritage volunteer, said he interviewed a 30‑year teacher who described a school quickly transitioning to predominantly recent immigrant students and alleged the district’s response was to lower standards rather than find effective solutions. Kimes said bilingual children were often used as translators instead of receiving tailored instruction and asked “what concrete steps are you guys taking to protect the instructional quality and the academic standards” for long‑time resident students.

Superintendent Barker responded directly to those concerns, saying Northwest Allen County Schools “is committed to serving all of the students who walk through our school doors.” Barker said support for ELL students is not about choosing one group over another and that the district provides targeted resources so students can access grade‑level learning. “We’re not in any way lowering standards for students in our English Language Learners Program,” Barker said, adding that ELL students are held to the same high standards and provided different resources to access learning.

Barker also told the board he had not yet reviewed materials left by commenters but would do so and offered to meet with interested parties. The board did not take any immediate policy action in response to the public comments; trustees thanked the speakers and moved on to the rest of the agenda.

Context: The remarks were made during the public‑comment portion of the May 18 regular board meeting. Commenters cited state‑level spending figures and classroom anecdotes; the superintendent characterized the district’s approach as differentiation and resourcing rather than standards changes. The claims made by public commenters were not verified during the meeting and remain unresolved.