On April 17, almost ninety minutes into a five-plus-hour hearing on Boston’s education budget, a student from the Mendell Elementary School in Roxbury stepped up for two minutes to address the City Council Ways and Means Committee.
“What I would like to say is that we need more budgets for the Mendell School to hire more teachers that speak our native language,” said the student, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic.
“I came to this country two years ago,” he explained, “and I know how helpful that will be, because I had some teachers that helped me, but not enough, though, because I’ve been going to some schools that have barely some teachers that speak Spanish or even French.”…