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Through the use of a translator, Virginia Garcia, a mother of three, begged the Prince George's County school board Feb. 25 to consider reinstating bilingual parent liaisons next year.

"We have a bilingual woman in our school who does us the favor of translating between students, parents and teachers," Garcia said, referring to the parent liaison at Charles Carroll Middle School in New Carrollton. "If you remove this service we, the Hispanic community, will be negatively affected."

The school board approved a $1.66 billion budget Saturday, which is a $45 million decrease in funding from the current budget. Due to budget constraints, about 1,800 full-time school employees have been laid off over the last three years and 800 additional layoffs were approved by the board Saturday for next fiscal year, which begins in July.

When the parent liaison position was created three years ago, a liaison was assigned to each county school full-time to bridge the communication gap between parents and administration.

Last year 110 parent liaison positions across the county were cut and many of the 90 remaining liaisons have been forced to serve two or three schools.

The additional layoffs will include the remaining parent liaisons, 40 of which are bilingual, said county schools superintendent William Hite Jr.

Hite said the reduction would save the school system $5.6 million.

Before Carroll Middle School had a liaison, the Spanish-speaking parents rarely attended PTA meetings or school functions because of the language barriers, Garcia said, adding that parent involvement has increased dramatically at the school in the last few years.

Without the translation aid of bilingual liaisons, parents will be forced to use their children as translators to communicate with teachers, Carlos Cervantes, a parent of a student at Carroll, told the board.

County Councilman Will Campos (D-Dist. 2) of Hyattsville echoed residents' sentiments and asked the school board to consider reorganizing the budget to allow for bilingual liaisons.

"If we get rid of these great people, I think it would be a huge detriment to our school system and a really bad message to our immigrant community," Campos said Feb. 25.

Hite agreed that bilingual assistance is needed but said the funding is not available to sustain positions.

"It's important for us to be able to continue to provide that function — not necessarily the role — but the function," Hite said.

After hearing from nearly 20 Spanish-speaking parents at the hearing, school board member Heather Iliff (Dist. 2) made a motion Saturday to amend the budget to include the reinstatement of the 40 bilingual parent liaisons. However, the motion was voted down 7-1.

"I will be ready to support this budget when I think we have paid attention to language access needs in our district," said Iliff, who later voted against the budget.

Board policy prohibits student board members from voting on policy, but student board member Edward Burroughs III said he would have supported the inclusion of bilingual parent liaisons in the budget had he been able to cast a vote.