At 7:00 AM sharp on Tuesday, December 2nd, my phone’s daily alarm blared me awake. I groggily opened my eyes and reached towards my bedside stand, grasped my phone in my hands, and turned the alarm off. I then reached my arm a little further to pull the curtain open. I peered outside: a soft layer of white blanketed the sidewalk and road beneath me. Looks like it had snowed overnight.

I lay back down and began scrolling through my notifications. A few texts from friends. Some Instagram messages. And an email from the Bernards Township School District—but wait, why did it say:

“早上好。由于天气恶劣，伯纳兹镇公立学校所有学校将延迟两小时上课。所有校车也将延迟两小时接送学生。学校不提供课前托管服务。谢谢。” [1]

My confused, sleep-deprived brain said silent apologies to my Chinese ancestors as I stumbled through the Chinese characters. I completely did not recognize the character “劣”, meaning I did not know its meaning nor its pronunciation, and I had to re-read “伯纳兹” multiple times over before I realized it was a crude transliteration of “Bernards.” It took me about five times as long as reading an English message would have taken me to understand the district’s simple message: due to the snow, we’d have a two-hour delayed opening. 

I stared at the text in disbelief. I began to wonder: why on Earth was the district telling me about emergency delayed openings…in Chinese? How did the district know I spoke Chinese at home or that I was Chinese-American? Was someone assuming that I would understand Chinese better than I did English, my native language? 

Mr. Markarian, the district Superintendent, and Mr. Beavers, the district’s Director of Information Technology, informed me that the district’s new messaging system wasn’t just about different languages—indeed, the district has replaced their entire communication system with students and parents from SchoolMessenger to Thrillshare [2]. 

Thrillshare, powered by Apptegy, is a platform that allows school districts to manage all communications, including text messages, emails, voicemails, emergency alerts, and social media posts, from a single digital space. Thrillshare is also designed to run from a mobile app, heightening its convenience to district communicators. According to Mr. Markarian, Thrillshare also “offers financial savings to the district” [2].

Thrillshare uses data from families’ Genesis profiles to determine how to send its messages and communications. Specifically, Thrillshare sends messages to students and parents in the language identified as the “home language” in their Genesis profiles. This “home language” is entered into the district’s registrar when families enroll in the district. Thrillshare also uses contact information entered into Genesis to contact students and parents [2].

When I inquired about the district’s motivation behind sending students and parents messages in their home language, Mr. Beavers and Mr. Markarian informed me that the district’s goal is to “communicate effectively in ways that people can understand; we are leveraging technology to help us achieve that” [2]. 

While laudable, this goal runs on a massive assumption: that students and parents would be better able to understand messages sent to them in their home language than messages sent to them in English. As a second-generation immigrant myself, I cannot help but caution: that assumption is often dangerously incorrect, and risks severely misunderstanding the immigrant experience.

Basking Ridge has a high proportion of immigrant families—according to Basking Ridge’s 2020 population census, 23.7% of Basking Ridge residents are foreign-born [3]. However, the majority of these immigrant families have resided in America for long durations—years, even decades—meaning that children who attend Bernard’s Townships public schools were often either born in the U.S or spent much of their childhood growing up in the U.S. 

Thus, our proficiency in our parents’ native tongue—our “home language”—is often dubious at best. Growing up in America, we’d learn in English in school, assigned to read English textbooks and English books and speak English and write in English like any other American kid. That meant the only place where our parents could attempt to instruct us in their native language or maintain our usage of their native language was at home. But with increasing academic demands, less time spent at home due to extracurricular activities, and the social pressure to assimilate to America, children-of-immigrants often have little proficiency in our parents’ native tongue. 

The reality is that children-of-immigrants’ proficiency in our “home language” is often limited to meager aural and speaking skills, with our parents speaking to us in our “home language” while we respond in English or a mixture (like “Chinglish”) of both languages. Without ever receiving a structured education in our home language, such as textbooks or assigned essays, children-of-immigrants often lack proficient reading or writing skills in their parents’ native language.

This becomes a frustrating issue when our school district begins sending us emails, calls, and voicemails about important school communications and emergency alerts in our home language. Vibha Agastya, a sophomore and our RDA Arts and Entertainment editor, could not understand the messages she received from Thrillshare in Hindi. Neither could Naqi Qureshi, a senior, understand the Urdu messages he received from Thrillshare. Shinah Lee, a sophomore and our RDA Sports Editor, struggled to understand the Korean messages she received from Thrillshare. Often, this lack of understanding wasn’t just failing to understand a word or two—it was the inability to glean meaning from the messages at all. Jenny Wang, a senior who received her Thrillshare messages in Mandarin, and Sahithi Gorthi, a senior and our RDA STEM editor who received her Thrillshare messages in Telugu, told me that they could not understand from their respective messages that there was a delayed opening on December 2nd. 

Of course, some students, especially those that are new to the U.S or immigrated to the U.S themselves, may be proficient in their home language, consider it their native language, or prefer messages sent to them in their home language. But students proficient in their home language also raised questions about Thrillshare’s translated messages. Srishti Jain, a senior, who received her messages in Hindi, said that Thrillshare’s messages used outdated, old-fashioned grammar that few could presently understand. Aysesu Ertugul, a freshman, said her Turkish messages displayed poor Turkish capability and felt unidiomatic and AI-generated. Personally, I consider myself fluent in Mandarin and can read, write, speak, and understand most intermediate Mandarin. However, I found that my Thrillshare message lended itself to a translation error: the original Mandarin message I received stated that before-school care programs would not be offered due to the delayed opening. Curiously, when translated to English using the Google Translate feature embedded into Gmail, the message instead stated that after-school care programs would not be offered [1]. Although this is an error with Google Translate and not Thrillshare itself, such translation errors could have caused confusion among students who translated their messages after receiving them in languages they did not understand, and displays the murky possibility of miscommunication that inevitably arises when translating across languages.

Let’s consider the flipside for a moment here—how proficient are students and parents with English? With over 90% of residents over 25 years old having a high school degree and over 70% of residents having a Bachelor’s degree, Basking Ridge’s residents, regardless of immigration status, largely hold professional or corporate positions that require fluent usage of English [3]. Although some students are certainly new to America and may not be proficient in English, the majority of students are proficient and would even consider English their main or first language. I struggle to believe that many families in Basking Ridge would be unable to understand English messages.

Thus, I truly believe that the district’s best course of action is to simply send all official messages to families in English. According to Mr. Beavers, “enabling [Thrillshare’s translation features] wasn’t driven by a request from a parent or student” [2] I’m willing to bet that that’s simply because there just really isn’t a demand for translated messages from Basking Ridge’s families. Sending messages in English would not only avoid any errors that may occur from translation—it would also avoid sending messages that some recipients may literally be unable to read at all. I’d also imagine it’d be more convenient for the district to send messages in a single language.

However, a supplemental translation feature, where students and parents can choose to translate the district’s official English messages into a language of their choice, may be helpful and meet the needs of those who are not proficient in English. But the current status quo of sending official messages in families’ home language is truly unsustainable—no one should receive messages they are unable to read from the school district. Mr. Markarian’s statement that the district is currently unsure whether “students and parents can get the alerts in different languages….meaning the child wants it in one language but their parent wants it in a different language […] is possible” is highly concerning to me [2]. For parents, “home languages” are often their native language. But for students, “home languages” are often an intermediate ability to speak and understand and a low proficiency in reading and writing—a poor choice of communication to send official, emergency alerts.

I’m honestly quite surprised that the district enacted this change. With such a high immigrant population and multiple members of the immigrant community represented on the Board of Education, I thought such a change would be immediately recognized as counterproductive at best, insensitive at worst. I was born and raised in the United States. I’ve pledged my allegiance to the American flag for my entire childhood. English is my native language—an assumption from the school district I grew up in that any other language could be more dear and clear to me confounds and disappoints me. 

Sources:

[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uFf693lUvljL-R_CTjKeS8WOPS_khctV/view?usp=sharing

[2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c00L3DK3pgbvUXPpIaGem4VUzHqVWxIn/view?usp=sharing

[3] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/bernardstownshipsomersetcountynewjersey