Texas school districts are struggling to find teachers to lead bilingual programs in a widening array of languages.
As districts' language diversity expands beyond Spanish, qualified teachers fluent in English and languages such as Vietnamese and Arabic are difficult to find, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Texas requires any school district with at least 20 students who speak a language other than English in a grade level to provide bilingual education in that language.
Next year, the Garland school district will start a bilingual Vietnamese pre-kindergarten. It needs about 45 bilingual teachers to meet the needs for elementary school students.
Without bilingual programs many districts place students in ESL classes with students who speak a variety of languages and teachers who often don't speak their language.
The Texas Education Agency has found 140 different languages are spoken among the state's students. Statewide, Spanish is followed by Vietnamese, Arabic and Urdu as the most prevalent languages.
