“It was nerve wracking,” said principal Shelly Murphy of the early days of the school. “I didn’t know what it would be like.”
She worried about hiring the right people for the school, since she wanted empathetic people with some experience with immigrant students.
“Then the first day, they (the students) showed up, and we hit the ground running,” Murphy said.
The school board voted to set up the school in May 2022, and it began educating students in August 2022 with roughly 350 students. Enrollment hit 500 students by the end of that school year.
Former DPS superintendent Elizabeth Lolli worked with the community to get the school open. Current superintendent David Lawrence helped the school grow and Murphy said the district has continued to support the school all three years she’s worked there.
“As indicated by test data, these students have seen significant progress and growth as a result of these intensive efforts.” Lawrence said. “In my opinion, the school is doing an exceptional job and is making a big difference in the lives of students and families.”
Residence Park got one star on the most recent Ohio state report cards but received a higher overall score than four other DPS schools.
The immigrant students in Residence Park usually attend for about a year, though Murphy said some students who may never have attended school before can stay for two years. The goal is to send them to their regular school, but in that first year, to keep them in an environment where they can learn intensive English, how to behave in an American school and the skills they need to succeed in the U.S.
Residence Park includes preschool through 12th grade, a rarity for the largest district in Montgomery County. Most of the students who attend are recent immigrants, with students who originate from more than 30 countries.
Roughly half of them are refugees from other nations, Murphy said. Even those who have been to school might have gaps in their education from moving across the globe or different educational norms in their native countries.
“We’re focused on learning English, but also social emotional learning,” Murphy said.
International schools are uncommon in Ohio’s public school districts. Cleveland has a similar school, called the Natividad Pagan International School. Columbus offers immersion programs for elementary, middle and high school students, which are open to anyone, but does not have a specific school for new immigrants, a spokeswoman said.
The Montgomery County Educational Service Center offers an intensive English program for English language learners.
Murphy said one of the advantages of having a single school is consolidating resources. English language teachers are in high demand across the nation. But it also acclimates the kids who are used to constantly being with their siblings, she said, since younger kids can see their older siblings during the day.
On a recent Dayton Daily News visit to the school, inside one of the first-grade classrooms, about 10 students sat on a rug for a math lesson. The classroom looked just like every other grade school classroom in America: lots of posters, desks sized for 6-year-olds and cubbies for their stuff. The lesson was taught in English, but the teacher spoke Spanish and so did the kids in their side chatter, even if they weren’t from native Spanish-speaking countries.
While the goal is to learn English, the kids who attend the school end up picking up other languages, too. Murphy said the most common places that students in the school come from include Latin American countries like Columbia and Guatemala and African countries like Congo and Rwanda. But there are students from Middle Eastern countries, Haiti and Southeast Asia.
There has been little pushback to the school. Residence Park neighbors asked the district to allow their own kids to attend their neighborhood school when it reopened, which did end up happening. In May 2022, the Residence Park neighborhood association joined immigrant community leaders in advocating for the school.
About 60 American kids attend the Montessori program in the school, Murphy said, most of whom live in the neighborhood.
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