K12Translate Honors Three Schools/Districts with Grants to Build Home-School Connection with Non-Native-English-Speaking Students and Families

Online, August 3, 2010 (Newswire.com) - A Colorado magnet school for refugee students, a primary school in the heart of the Midwest and a large K-12 school district in eastern Washington are the winners of the first K-12 Translation Grants from K12Translate, the leading K-12 translation service. This diverse group of schools/districts earned the grants for their ambitious initiatives to build the home-school connection with non-native-English-speaking students and their families.

"As we reviewed the K-12 Translation Grant applications, we saw similar translation needs being faced by schools and districts of all sizes and demographics. Each of our three grant winners epitomizes K12Translate's mission - to bridge the gap between home and school," said Chanin Ballance, President and CEO, K12Translate. "We are proud to support Denver's Place Bridge Academy, Illinois' Rock Island School District #41 and Washington state's Central Valley School District in their efforts to break down language barriers and build strong home-school connections by awarding them our inaugural K-12 Translation Grants."

Place Bridge Academy (PBA) is the recipient of the $1,000 in-kind translation grant. A magnet elementary school for refugee students, PBA serves 900 students hailing from 30 different countries and speaking more than 40 languages, with the majority coming from Central America, Myanmar (Burma), Bhutan and Somalia. With only a small percentage of these students living in households where English is the primary language, translation and interpretation are always high priorities at PBA. In the grant application, PBA Resource Advocate Erin Sovick said that the school will use the K-12 Translation Grant to translate larger documents, such as school registration packets, information about the mobile health clinic that serves the school, free- and reduced-lunch forms and parent/teacher conference information. This would allow PBA to "strengthen the writing communication with the families who are new to America, bridging the gap between home and school for our children."

The winner of one of two $500 translation grants, Central Valley School District (CVSD) serves an 80-square-mile area in Spokane Valley, Wash., with more than 12,400 students enrolled in 22 schools. The English language learner (ELL) students and families served by the district speak 21 different languages. CVSD will use its grant to support translating core materials, such as the "Student Responsibilities and Rights" publication and documents related to special-education services, into languages such as Russian, Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic and Marshallese.

At Rock Island School District #41, located in western Illinois, new ELL teacher Korah Winn will use the $500 in-kind translation grant to expand the materials the district has available for communicating with its growing refugee population, with languages ranging from Spanish and Arabic to Swahili and Russian.

K12Translate offers translation services for any project a school district might have - from small projects, such as health notices or field trip permission slips, to larger documents, such as school manuals and educational materials. The company works with more than 1,000 native-speaking translators to ensure that the finished product uses the appropriate dialects and reflects cultural sensitivities. To ensure the highest quality, all K-12 education translations are put through the same rigorous process. They are translated by a native-speaking translator, proofread and edited by a secondary native speaker for accuracy and reviewed by a K12Translate project manager for completion and final delivery.

viaLanguage, a leading provider of global translation and localization services, launched this business unit dedicated to serving K-12 schools a year ago to serve the growing demand for these services. Today K12Translate is the nation's leading professional, online translation service for schools and provides translation services in more than 50 languages to the nation's top school districts.