A Colorado magnet school for refugee students, a primary school in the heart of the Midwest and a large K-12 school district in eastern Washington are the winners of the first K-12 Translation Grants from K12Translate. This diverse group of schools/districts earned the grants for their ambitious initiatives to build the home-school connection with non-native-English-speaking students and their families.

Place Bridge Academy (PBA) is the recipient of the $1,000 in-kind translation grant. A magnet elementary school for refugee students, PBA serves 900 students hailing from 30 different countries and speaking more than 40 languages, with the majority coming from Central America, Myanmar (Burma), Bhutan and Somalia. With only a small percentage of these students living in households where English is the primary language, translation and interpretation are always high priorities at PBA. . In the grant application, PBA Resource Advocate Erin Sovick said that the school will use the K-12 Translation Grant to translate larger documents, such as school registration packets, information about the mobile health clinic that serves the school, free- and reduced-lunch forms and parent/teacher conference information. This would allow PBA to “strengthen the writing communication with the families who are new to America, bridging the gap between home and school for our children.”

See: PR USA.net