SARASOTA, Fla. — Dreamers Academy first launched for grades kindergarten through second with 190 children in a temporary building in 2021.
Two years later, the charter school’s building is complete, and they’re ready to start the school year with nearly 500 students up to fourth grade.
“Bienvenidos Dreamers Academy! Como estas? Welcome!” Principal Catherine Rodriguez said to a student at open house Monday.
"The model is a 50/50 model, which is just a language allocation. We have an A-B flip, where our students have two teachers— one English teacher that teaches all content areas, and so does Spanish, and then the flip day, they switch,” Rodriguez explained.
Heidi Hernandez told ABC Action News that her family came to the United States from Guatemala two years ago because the education there was not good, and there was no work for her or her husband. Her son attended kindergarten at Dreamers Academy last year, and he's picking up English extremely fast.
Zac Cox has a fourth-grader and first-grader at Dreamers Academy this year.
"I wanted my kids to have a Spanish education. It just gives them a foot up in life as they get older, makes the world a smaller place for them," Cox exclaimed. "Their vocabulary has expanded immensely... So it's been a big benefit for them in the long term."
It’s a concept founder Geri Chaffee has been pushing for since 2017.
“I was volunteering in a local Title I school in Sarasota, and I was teaching math to three little boys that didn't know English. So we were having a great time in Spanish, and then the teacher tapped me on the shoulder, ‘Mrs. Chaffee English, we’re in America, and you need to speak English,’ but I'm teaching the math,” she said. “It was kind of a shock to me. When I switched to English, these kids, you know, it looked like they were so defeated.”
She explained that they were very intelligent when they understood the curriculum. However, it was the language barrier keeping them from succeeding.
Sarasota School District Director Harriet Moore said the language barrier was something she noticed nearly a decade ago as a middle school principal in Sarasota.
“I had a great concern for our English language learners in this community as I was watching that population grow,” Moore explained.
In her nine years at the middle school, she said the Spanish-speaking population grew from a few students to about half of the entire school.
“I believe that in our community that that is the largest growing and fastest growing population right now in Sarasota County, and not only Sarasota County but throughout our state,” she added.
Dreamers Academy is located in the historic African American neighborhood of Newtown in Sarasota, where Chaffee said there are also a lot of Spanish-speaking families.
After two years, the Dreamers Academy administration can prove the concept works.
“Last year, our third grade just went from 30 to 58% In reading, and then in math, third grade went from 3% to 85%,” Rodriguez boasted.
Chaffee added that the learning gains in English Language Arts and math are greater than the average Sarasota school district and the state of Florida.
“One of the hurdles was trying to explain to a lot of district leaders and people that are in charge of curriculum and instruction that this is a model that works, that children actually can learn how to read a lot quicker in Spanish, and then transfer it to English,” Chaffee explained. “There are no ‘grade level reading problems’ in Spanish. We don't have sight words. We have five vowel sounds in Spanish and 25 consonant sounds. And if you can say, ‘Hasta la vista, baby,’ you can pretty much read in Spanish.”
The model is also part of programs in Manatee and Pinellas county schools.
Chaffee hopes that more districts in the state and country will see the dual-language model’s success and implement their own programs.
“Come visit us, learn from us, learn the model, and then just expand that because it's very valuable, and our children need it,” Chaffee said.
The school currently has about 10 spots left in kindergarten and second grade and will expand to fifth grade next year. Click here to learn more.
