Growing Diversity Brings Challenges for Morton Grove

Walking into parents' night at a District 219 high school is a bit like a visit to the United Nations.

As the school principal explains curriculum minutiae or the college application process, head-set-wearing parents receive simultaneous translations in up to six foreign languages.

“I wish they had that when I came here [from Syria in 1990],” said Souzhan Barko, who now translates into Assyrian and Arabic for recent immigrants as a parent liaison for the district.

The Niles High School translation program is just one of the many ways local government, businesses and residents are adapting to an increasingly more diverse population in Morton Grove.

Recently released continues to be one of the more diverse towns in Illinois, where whites make up 71 percent of the population. Whites comprise 62 percent of the town's population, down from 71 percent in the 2000 census. Its minority population is just 1.2 percent African-Americans, compared with 14.3 percent in Illinois, and 6.5 percent Hispanic or Latino residents, compared with 15.8 percent statewide.

The largest demographic shift has been an increase Asian residents, a wide-ranging group of nationalities who come from places including the Indian subcontinent; Middle Eastern countries, including Syria, Iraq and Iran; and the Far East, including Korea, China and others.

At 28 percent of the population--up from 22 percent in 2000--Morton Grove has a denser population of Asians than any other North Shore community.

The increases in immigrants coming to the suburbs in the past 10 years represent a significant shift, said Corrie Wallace, director of the Niles Township schools’ English Language Learning (ELL) Parent Center.

“It used to be that new immigrants would move first to Chicago and eventually out to the suburbs,” she said.

Now that many new arrivals already have family and friends in the suburbs, they are moving directly to those areas, she said.

The new immigrants bring their foods and culture with them, which is why Morton Grove shoppers can find not one, but 15 brands of Tahini at Arax Foods. They can also find exotic delicacies such as fresh sea cucumbers, enoki mushrooms, banana flowers and snails at Assi Plaza. They can even rent Bollywood movies and buy tabla music CD’s at a convenience store.

But having such a divergent population presents its own set of challenges, in the form of language and cultural barriers.

90 languages and counting

No fewer than 90 languages are spoken in Morton Grove homes, Wallace said, and many times they are the primary or only language of new immigrants.

Because translation services are so much in demand, Parkview Elementary School now highly prizes bilingualism in hiring office staff, said District 70 Superintendent Gary Zabilka.

“We did just hire our first staff member who speaks Urdu,” Zabilka said. That’s a dialect spoken in India and Pakistan.

But with no Korean speaking staff members and numerous Korean families, “it’s not at all uncommon for us to use a student to translate,” he added.

Most of the kids speak at least some English, Zabilka said, and, using the language-learning superpowers that the younger set have, come up to speed quickly.

In an increasingly globalized economy, having early experience with such diversity is invaluable for all the students, Zabilka said.

“These kids will be exposed to more cultures than almost anywhere else I can think of.”

Cultural differences and adaptations

Beyond language, culture can also be a puzzle.

District 67 school board member Samina Hussein, a first generation Indian immigrant, said it is unheard of in many parts of the world for schools to expect parents to have such an active role in their children’s education as is crucial in the American school system.

“In India, people don’t get involved in their schools,” Hussein said. “There is no such thing as a parent-teacher conference.”

“The kids just go to school and they come home,” she added.

Furthermore, there are no report cards or progress reports, Hussein noted, just one big standardized test at the end of the year.

“It’s probably a very strange situation for them,” she said of the parents' shift to American schools.

Several area organizations have stepped in to help new immigrants navigate not only the schools but American culture as a whole. Longstanding ones include the Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs and the Hebrew International Aid Society (HIAS).

HIAS, based in Chicago, began as an organization serving Russian Jewish immigrants. It has since expanded its mission to serve people of all nationalities. In space provided by the ELL Parent Center, HIAS provides English language classes, help with navigating government bureaucracy and citizenship classes for those on the path to naturalization.

The village government's take

As for the Village of Morton Grove itself, Village Administrator Joe Wade said he has recently reached out to police, firefighters and first responders to discuss the need for clear communication in situations that can become matters of life or death.

Trustee Larry Gomberg sits on Morton Grove’s community relations commission and attends meetings of the Northwest Municipal conference, where mayors from the northern and northwestern suburbs have begun discussions about the shared challenge of growing immigrant populations.

He said local government needs to do more to interface with its diverse population.

 “We’re looking for ways to provide services to that population,” Gomberg said. “The big question is, what do we do?”