ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Two women are bringing what they call an “essential toolkit” to upstate New York to help support refugees as the federal government renounces its role in educating English learners.

Moving to a new school can be scary. But for one group of students, not only have they moved to a new school, but a new country with different customs and a completely different language. Which is exactly why Rochester LACE co-founder Pauline Rosenberg and instructor Darci Dembroski wanted to be a resource to their community.

What You Need To Know

One in seven people in Monroe County speaks English as a second language and have difficulty navigating their way through everyday life in an English-speaking world

The Trump administration proposed eliminating all $890 million in Title III federal funding for English language acquisition programs for the fiscal year 2026 budget, and reduced the Office of English Language Acquisition to a single person

Many of these families rely on their school-age children to act as their interpreters. To combat this issue of lack of resources, Rochester LACE has been providing free English instructions to refugees within the area. Findings by the instructors say that it is important for the child to know the language just as much as the parents

“How can I sit home when people are coming here and no one is helping them to feel comfortable when they don’t have the language to express themselves,” Rosenberg said. “What can we do to help them?”

Over 2 million New Yorkers speak English as a second language. However, the Trump administration proposed eliminating all $890 million in Title III federal funding for English language acquisition programs for the fiscal year 2026 budget, and reduced the Office of English Language Acquisition to a single person.

“They’re not getting the needs met, which is really going to help them be very contributing members of society, which is why they need to learn English,” Dembroski said. “And then we can look at the humanity side of it and say, OK, they really need to be cared for and loved. And one of the ways we can do that is by giving them the skills of English.”

To combat this issue of lack of resources, Rosenberg and Dembroski have been providing free English instructions to refugees within the area. Through their work, they have found that it is important for the child to know the language just as much as the parents. Rochester LACE offers English programs for moms and preschool children hosted across several areas of Monroe County.

“We want to do our part to build their confidence so that they can maybe talk to their children’s teachers,” Rosenberg said. “Maybe they can go into an appointment or make their own appointment. But anything that we do to help them feel like they’re not isolated.”

Bringing together not only a plethora of skills but a sense of belonging.

“Somebody from Nigeria and somebody from Syria, they might not have met otherwise,” Rosenberg said. “And then one of them walks into class and the other end starts beaming. And it’s like there’s my friend. We’re building a community within the classroom, and we’re helping them to feel like they’re part of the bigger community with really very little shared language.”

“There’s a lot of different languages represented, and we don’t speak any of their languages, and they don’t speak each other’s language often,” Dembroski said. “How effective it is just to be another person and just to relate on a human level.”