How Nashville schools are keeping up with more Hispanic students

For Sherlyn Serrano, learning English was more than just learning a new language.

It also meant adjusting to a strange new home and culture. Serrano, now 18, immigrated to Nashville with her family at age 12 and knew only a few words of English when she started sixth grade at Wright Middle School. Suddenly away from her friends and extended family, she was overwhelmed, anxious and angry.

“I cried for five months, every day, because I wanted to go home to Mexico,” she said.

When she entered Glencliff High School, Serrano decided to fully acquire skills.

During her last year, Serrano was one of 23,976 English learners, also called multilingual students, in Metro Nashville Public Schools. That’s up from about 13,801 students 10 years ago, which is about a 74% increase. Multilingual students now account for nearly a third of the district.

The Hispanic and Hispanic student population has also increased. If trends continue, it will become the largest ethnic group at MNPS — a seat long held by black students. About 80% of multilingual students are native Spanish speakerslike Serrano.

MNPS is not alone in this shift. The Department of Education predicted Nearly 30% of all public school students in the nation will be Hispanic or Hispanic by 2030. Although some may attribute the increase to immigration, Data from Pew Research Center published in 2023 said rising birth rates in the country’s Latino and Hispanic population is the main driver.

While Serrano received support from the MNPS Office of English Learners, teachers and peers along the way, she said she didn’t feel completely comfortable navigating the school until well into her time at Glencliff. As difficult as her journey was, she said it ultimately built her confidence.

It also inspired her to give back. She graduated in May and plans to attend Cumberland University this fall to study teaching. More specifically, she wants to teach English students so that they have someone who understands how they feel.

“I was when I was little,” she said.

Keeping up with the growing needs of an increasingly diverse student population is no easy task for MNPS. Here’s what teachers, administrators, advocates and others had to say about how they’re navigating it all.

An “overnight” change at Thomas Edison Elementary

One day in late June at Thomas Edison Elementary School in Antioch, teachers Angel Carter and Ashley Cleveland worked with a small group of children, most of whom spoke Spanish as their first language, in a reading lesson. Both teachers hold special certification to teach English as a second language and signed up to work with Promising Scholars, a free summer academic program offered by MNPS.

They challenged the students to solve a riddle written on a large piece of paper at the front of the room. It read: “I’ll take you all over the world but I’m not a car. I can be real or fantasy. I can have words but I can’t speak. What am I?”

As the children, entering fourth grade, worked on the exercise, Carter and Cleveland encouraged them to discuss it among themselves and explain their thoughts out loud, paying close attention to the meaning of each word.

“A map?” a child guessed.

“A teacher?” asked another.

After about 20 minutes and a few more guesses, the teachers revealed the answer: “A book!”

Students continued to discuss different forms of poetry and later worked on a writing assignment. The slower pace and smaller class sizes gave teachers extra time to focus on each child and help them as needed. While children who are multilingual students typically spend part of their day with teachers like Carter and Cleveland during summer school and the regular school year, most days are spent mixing with native English-speaking peers.

Sitting in a high chair at the back of another classroom, Assistant Principal Sabrina Hendrix spoke about the increase in the number of native Spanish speakers at Edison in recent years. Before that, she said, the majority of their multilingual students spoke Egyptian or Arabic.

“It just seems like overnight,” Hendrix said of the change.

For years, Hispanic and Latino students made up about 25-30% of Edison’s student body, district data show. A rapid increase started the 2020-21 school year and in 2023-24 the group made up half the school. Of these students, approximately 85% are multilingual students.

Solving the puzzle of what each child needs is the biggest challenge for her school, Hendrix said.

Some need more intensive support, including translated materials and time with English teachers who are separate from native English-speaking peers. Some families and students speak languages that require translation services, which are provided by the district.

Although the work is challenging, Hendrix, who has a background as an English teacher, said she loves seeing the desire to grow among multilingual students. She especially enjoys seeing children who are more skilled help others along the way.

“They become little mini-teachers,” Hendrix said with a laugh.

A push for representation in the midst of change

Overall, the multilingual student population has increased by 80% over the past 10 years at Edison Elementary. As the population increased, the school hired full-time translators to support families who speak Arabic and Spanish. It also hired front desk staff who are Egyptian and Hispanic, which Hendrix said is an effort to put families at ease and make them feel welcome and represented.

Representation is also a focus for Gini Pupo-Walker, who worked as a teacher and later as the first ever Hispanic or Latino school board member at MNPS. She recently took a job at the Raikes Foundation and continued her work advocating for education and marginalized communities.

Data provided by MNPS shows that only about 1.5-2% of teachers and administrators are Hispanic and Latino.

“Students and parents in the community need to see Latinos in leadership positions,” Pupo-Walker said. “They provide an awareness of how to address issues with their school communities.”

Pupo-Walker also said city leaders should take note of the changes at MNPS because the district and city are interconnected.

As an example, she said the growth in the Hispanic and Hispanic student population is driven in part by high demand for construction jobs as development thrives in Nashville. Census data from 2020 showed that about 14% of Nashville was Hispanic or Hispanic. If the students now enrolled in MNPS stay in the city, that will change.

“District numbers have often been … bells and whistles of where the city is going,” she said.

A diversity of needs

Every day, the main hub of the MNPS Office of English Learners is full of staff walking families through registration, testing students’ skills and translating everything from instructional materials to district emails into multiple languages.

Molly Hegwood has led the team as the district’s multilingual student population has grown in both size and diversity over the past five years. In response, Hegwood said, MNPS increased funding for translation and interpretation services available by phone, along with opening enrollment sites at Antioch High School, Casa Azafran and the Hispanic Family Foundation.

Her team has also added more instructional coaches who work with schools and administrators to support multilingual students, along with more specialists who act as liaisons with families and community organizations.

While state test scores understandably lag for students still learning English, Hegwood said new data shows that students who leave the English learner program often excel academically. In 2023 and 2024, she said students outperformed native English speakers in all grades at MNPS in both English language arts and math.

Pupo-Walker praised the work of Hegwood’s office, while acknowledging a critical need for more English teachers. It is partly spurred by the ongoing teacher shortage throughout the country. That need becomes more complicated when students enter high school, where they are spread across more classrooms than younger students.

“All teachers could benefit from some strategies to help break down concepts for English learners,” she said.

While staffing, turnover and resources are an ever-present challenge for any school district, Hegwood said MNPS is leading the way when it comes to its work with multilingual students. She has also seen more and more schools, administrators and teachers take responsibility for supporting them, instead of just leaving it to the limited number of English teachers in the district.

“Our district as a whole has really embraced the population that we serve,” Hegwood said.

Additionally, she said the district has moved away from giving English language learners support materials or completely separating them from their peers. Instead, Hegwood said they immerse students in elementary-level material and give them as much time as possible around native English speakers.

“Everyone’s timing is different”

For Serrano, a recent Glencliff graduate, the suddenness of that immersion was the hardest for her, as her family moved to the United States on short notice. During middle school, she became hooked on Spanish speaking and was distracted in her EL classes.

“I wasted two years,” she said. “I got incredibly off track.”

Already in high school, she realized how important it was to focus on learning English. She sought out English-speaking friends, got a job at a restaurant and even started dating an English-speaking boy. She learned, but her confidence wavered when it came to actually speaking English.

“It’s frustrating when you can’t find the words to explain how you feel, or what you want to do,” she said.

On her annual proficiency test, she knew how to write, read and understand English. But when it came time for the speaking part of the exam, she was embarrassed.

“It wasn’t hard,” she said. “I was just ashamed to speak.”

Year after year she passed the exam. Although it didn’t result in her being held back (something federal law prohibits), the test puzzled her. Serrano said she was also self-conscious about her accent. That changed when one of her middle school teachers told her that her accent is part of who she is.

It helped her shake off the feeling that others were judging the way she spoke.

“They might make fun of my accent, but that’s where I’m from, that’s my motherland,” Serrano said. “I will not be ashamed of my accent.”

And as for the baffling test? She finally passed her senior year and proved to herself that she really could do it.

If Serrano could tell her 12-year-old self one thing, she said it would be this:

“Take everything at your own pace,” she said. “Everyone’s timing is different, and that’s okay.”

Diana Leyva and Stephanie Amador contributed to this story.

Reach children’s reporter Rachel Wegner at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter, Threads and Bluesky @RachelAnnWegner.