Spanish-Speaking Puerto Rico Balks at Trump’s Proposal to Require English at Head Start Centers

The only English words 4-year-old Alaisha Sandoval knows are courtesy of “Peppa Pig,” but that could soon change.

The Trump administration is proposing that Head Start programs teach exclusively in English, rejecting the federal early-childhood program’s practice of incorporating the languages students speak at home. Alaisha’s father, Hansel Alejandro Sandoval, smiled when he heard the news: The policy, he said, would help open his daughter’s world.

Not all parents and advocates are so optimistic about the change in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory with more than 700 Head Start centers. English and Spanish are the territory’s official languages, but most of its 3.2 million residents say they do not speak English fluently.

Educators and Puerto Rican officials warn the change would undermine children’s connection to their language and culture — and would require costly materials and teacher training on a Caribbean island already struggling with a scarcity of resources and educators.

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Roughly 25,000 children across Puerto Rico attend Head Start centers, which provide free preschool education, health services and support programs for low-income families. {snip}

“Learning a second language opens doors,” he said, but he worries about the effect of making it compulsory. Less than 10% of the island’s Head Start teachers are fluent in English, he said. {snip}

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Across the U.S., Head Start serves roughly 700,000 low-income children, a third of whom speak a language other than English at home. In Puerto Rico, federally reported data show, 99% of children enrolled in Head Start come from Spanish-speaking homes.

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