Planning helped school district
By Bobbi Mlynar
Originally published 01:55 p.m., November 19, 2007
Updated 01:55 p.m., November 19, 2007
Communication, planning, and an active chamber of commerce helped assimilate refugees into Norfolk, Neb., according to an official with Norfolk public school district.
Norfolk, like Emporia, is a city of similar population that earlier dealt with an influx of immigrants and refugees.
Unlike Emporia, however, many of Norfolk’s refugees were from Sudan. Somalis also were part of the influx, though their numbers were many less than the Sudanese, according to Doug Witte, director of student services for the Norfolk school district.
“We were blessed by the fact that we probably had a very congealed population,” Witte said. “We had folks who created businesses within our community to serve their populations without a great deal of conflict.”
Witte said that a church group helped the refugees adjust to Norfolk.
“Most of ours came out of Omaha with Lutheran Family Services. That organization did a pretty good job of working within the community,” Witte said.
A New American Center was established by the city, and initially was supported by contributions from the community. It now is supported through Lutheran Family Services, he said.
Information was distributed about the new populations, and Norfolk’s chamber of commerce from the beginning took a major role in working with new populations in setting up businesses to serve the refugees’ needs, especially within the Somali population, he said.
“With our Somali population, we had a couple of very good business folks who came early into the community, set up their own businesses, stores, worked with the chamber of commerce,” Witte said.
Incoming businessmen set up restaurants, grocery stores, fabric shops, and other businesses to provide for the refugees’ day-to-day need for familiar cultural necessities. The chamber found that much of the refugees’ business was conducted through trade, rather than cash.
“We tried to eliminate the aspects of fear,” Witte said. “Our experience was that they did want to work, they did want to carry their own, and they did not necessarily want to depend on that agency that sponsored them. I think as a community we learned a lot.”
Law enforcement also took a proactive role as the refugees came to Norfolk, Witte said.
Police helped refugees learn about driver’s licenses, city ordinances, and other rules that made day-to-day living different from their home countries.
“Law enforcement was active. We had to do a lot with the refugee perspective. They had no idea what Norfolk, Neb., law was about,” Witte said.
Schools, too, prepared to receive student refugees to help them adapt to the American culture.
Meetings were set up for teachers and staff to familiarize them with incoming cultures and with plans for educating all of the students.
Physical education, for example, posed a potential problem until school officials worked with refugees to give them an “avenue of acceptance into curriculum, and what you can expect girls to do.”
“As a school community, we had to come together to see ... how we make them included rather than excluded,” he said.
“Our population was very easy to work with, and I think it’s just like everything else, the greater the issue you personify, the greater the issue becomes.”
Witte said that Muslims who wanted to pray during the school day were given several options for fitting prayers into their non-class schedules. Study hall, lunch, and other non-class periods were suggested as times for prayers, and certain quiet areas were offered for students who wanted privacy to pray.
Translations did not come easily for Family Educational Rights Protection Act (FERPA) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) documents. The Norfolk district solved much of that problem by finding translators, through e-mails, at a nearby community college or Wayne State University 35 miles away.
The district did add two or three classrooms for English as a Second Language classes.
“Our population didn’t all come at once, so as the refugees came in, we were able to absorb them,” Witte said. “... Our district found out that it is better to be proactive rather than reactive. It’s always nice when you know these things are coming in advance.”
Many of the refugees worked at the Tyson beef-processing plant at Norfolk until it closed in February 2006.
“At that time, most of our refugee population did leave, and they went to other plants, either in Lexington, Grand Island, some went back to Minneapolis, and others returned to Denver,” Witte said.
When the plant closed, some of the refugees also had the option to work in a pork plant in Madison, Neb.
“When our beef plant closed, our Somali population could not stay,” he said. “That’s why they had to relocate.”
The Somalis, because most are Muslim, cannot handle pork because of religious constraints.
The Sudanese, who primarily are Christians, have no such restrictions, nor do the Hispanic immigrants who worked for Tyson in Norfolk.
Since the closing came and many of the refugees moved, the school district has undergone a loss of federal funds that had been available.
“Because of the loss of the plant of the families moving away, and refugees, etc. ... the allocation coming back to us as a school district is less than it was two years ago, and it’s a significant amount of our budget,” Witte said. “... It’s affected the maintenance and continuance of the programs because our migrant (numbers) have decreased.”
When Tyson closed, Norfolk school district lost 88 to 100 students. Of those, kindergarten through 12th grade, about 30 of those were children of refugees, he said.
“I don’t know how much it added, but I can tell you that we’ve seen a significant impact in No Child Left Behind as a result of our refugees leaving,” Witte said.
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