New Jersey Children’s Foundation Awards $50,000 Grant
The New Jersey Children’s Foundation (NJCF) announced a $50,000 grant to the New Jersey Center for Teaching and Learning (NJCTL) to support the development of the first two courses in a new bilingual/ESL teacher certification program aimed at addressing New Jersey’s growing shortage of educators qualified to serve multilingual learners.
New Jersey has reported a teacher shortage in bilingual and English as a Second Language education to the U.S. Department of Education since 2004, as school districts across the state work to meet the needs of a rapidly growing multilingual student population.
The need is especially urgent in Newark, which enrolls the largest number of multilingual learners in the state. Newark Public Schools has seen its multilingual learner enrollment surge dramatically, growing from about 3,600 students in 2014 to more than 13,500 in 2024.