Monterey takes pride in the linguistic diversity that can be found in the city from physical representations on sidewalks in various languages such as Spanish, Mandarin, French (and others) to bringing people from around the globe to learn foreign languages at the Defense Language Institute.

Monterey County also has the largest number of bilingual students in our local public schools statewide (California Department of Education, 2020). Many of our bilingual students speak even more than two languages such as Spanish, Mixteco (Indigenous language), Triqui (Indigenous language), Tagalog (Philippines), and so many more.

This means that during a global pandemic we must ask ourselves as a community that prides itself in promoting multilingualism: Are we prepared to meet the needs of bilingual students? Do we have bilingual teachers who can communicate with parents that speak languages other than English? Most recently, an urgent question includes whether or not we have enough translators at local hospitals to support patients that speak other languages.

By Suzanne Garcia-Mateus

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