"Spanish takes 30 percent more space to say the same thing in English," he said. "On the other hand, Chinese takes up much less space."
The New York City public schools have not always tried to accommodate non-native English speakers. In the 1950s, teachers relied on "children helpers" to act as interpreters for a wave of Spanish-speaking students who arrived from Puerto Rico. At the time, the Board of Education appointed fewer than a dozen teachers to smooth the transition.
More recently, the Education Department has depended on private vendors for translation and interpretation, a haphazard approach that forced most non-English-speaking families to rely on bilingual friends -- or their own children -- to translate.
Deycy Avitia, the coordinator of education advocacy for the New York Immigration Coalition, said she had heard complaints from parents for years.
"We have parents coming to us after a couple of semesters of their kids getting failing grades," she said. "They didn't realize it because the kids were doing the translating, and they would say that an `F' stands for fabulous."
Aside from reading report cards, non-English-speaking parents have trouble negotiating the enrollment and registration process, attending parent-teacher conferences, understanding disciplinary actions taken against their children and listening to the proceedings at PTA meetings.
Some advocates for immigrants have criticized the performance of the translation unit, saying it is slow and ineffective. The Immigration Coalition released a study in June about the unit's efficiency. The report called for the department to expand available services and communicate more frequently with schools.
Palma acknowledged that many principals have no idea that the translation office even exists, and that it typically takes a week to translate a two-page document.
"We have a lot of work to do," he said. "We are not the only solution to the problem."
But he is also contemplating what languages to add next. French and Albanian are both candidates, as is Hindi.
"Polish is very big right now," he said.
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