Hundreds turn out for city’s immigration initiative launch
Hundreds CENTERVILLE — turned out at Tower Heights Middle School on Tuesday evening to support a new Centerville school initiative designed to increase engagement between residents and immigrant families.
The initiative is called Connect Centerville and is funded through a grant from Heren Foundation USA, which donated $30,000 to Centerville Schools in support of the program. Tuesday’s event was the official kickoff for the initiative with the theme “We are Centerville.”
Waves of families from multicultural backgrounds made their way around the school to enjoy various performances from musicians and dancers, as well as information booths set up to represent a wide array of social services available to immigrant families in the city.
“I really have a great team that helped put all of this together,” said Megan LeMaster, the English Language Learner (ELL) coach for Centerville City Schools, who helped get Connect Centerville started. “I had several sleepless nights leading up to this event.”
LeMaster said Centerville has had an influx of new families from other countries over the past few years, so she wanted to put together something to welcome those recently arrived families.
Mayor Brooks Compton said the Connect Centerville initiative is a great way to show the city is striving to be inclusive. He thought the large turnout Tuesday night showed “the community is supportive of the many different English language learners that are in the school system.”
Community Relations Specialist Sarah Swan said the kickoff event helped the community begin to celebrate different cultures.
“Our English Language Learning team put on a fantastic event. We are proud to be part of a diverse com- munity that came together to celebrate many different cultures,” Swan said.
“We currently have 215 students who have been identified as English language learners, and their families speak more than 30 different languages. The top four languages are Chinese, Arabic, a variety of Indian languages and Spanish.” Contact this reporter at 937225-0586 or email Wayne. Baker@coxinc.com.