Echo Loder Elementary School struggles with a large and growing population of low-income minorities, many of whom don't speak English well.

The state seems likely to designate the Reno school April 1 as Washoc County's only school "in need of improvement" based on the scores of its fourth-graders on the fall 1999 TerraNova test.

The area the school serves in southeast Reno is being flooded with new immigrants, Principal Carole Worthen said. Of the school's 550 students, 77 percent are Hispanic. Several families now are occupying many of the apartments and rental homes around the school where one or two families used to live, she said.

Worthen expects enrollment to climb next year to almost 575 students, 120 percent of the school capacity of 480. But the older school building is too small to go to a multi track year-round class schedule, Worthen said. The schools in adjacent areas also are crowded, so they can't easily absorb the overflow.

Classrooms are packed.

All primary classrooms will be team-taught next year, with 32 to 34 pupils and two teachers. This past fall, fourth-graders crowded into two classrooms until the official count day in late September confirmed the school needed another fourth-grade teacher. That class was organized in October, just weeks before TerraNova tests were administered.

Three teachers handle six sessions of kindergarten this year, but only two will be employed next year, Worthen said.

The school has been building up its reading program slowly. While the Reading Recovery programs for first-graders began two years ago, teacher training for its companion programs for higher grades began just this year, the principal said. Another reading program, Accelerated Reader, which relies on computer testing and record keeping, was little help because of continual computer crashes last year.

Twilight program helps

To help children who don't speak English well, the school employs two English as a Second Language teachers and four ESL aides. In addition, it brought in its 97 kindergartners three weeks early for school in the fall for four hours of extra preparation.

To address language needs of the students' families, the school offers Twilight School three afternoons a week. Students receive three hours of homework help and enrichment activities as well as a free dinner. A Head Start program teaches 17 preschoolers, and adults join ESL classes.

To Worthen's knowledge, Twilight School is the only after-school program available in central Reno.

Once the reading programs get established, the focus will turn to math, Worthen said. The school will choose a math program, probably Everyday Math, to start next year with state improvement money.

"The program has manipulatives (models that kids can touch and play with) we didn't have access to. Those are very important with a child with a language deficiency. The program talks about building concepts and understanding of number relationships in K-l-2," she said.

To combat the combined problems of poverty, language and crowding, the school needs help: Money, more classroom space, but most of all, more time.

"Give me three years. We need time for all of this to take effect," Worthen said.

Other principals of schools with similar problems echo that plea.

Agnes Risley Elementary School in Sparks adopted Reading Recovery, California Early Learning Literacy and Extended Learning Literacy programs in the past five years, and teachers have received substantial training in them.

Yet students at the school, many of whom speak poor English, still are scoring low on TerraNova tests. More than 40 percent of fourth-graders scored in the bottom quarter of national percentiles in three subjects, putting the school in the danger zone but not firmly in the needs-improvement category.

Other Washoe County schools on the bubble are expected to be Lois Allen, Esther Bennett, both in Sun Valley; Lemmon Valley; and Lincoln Park in Sparks.

"We are seeing lots of progress. The teachers are trained in several kinds of assessments, reading, spelling, quick writing, and a writing sample. Most students are showing two to three years' growth (in a year). But it doesn't show on the TerraNova," Agnes Risley principal Sally Scott said.

Family background and language often hinder students, although families take education very seriously, Scott said.

"They come to meetings and parent conferences. They look at us as extended family," she said.

Some parents aren't literate in either English or their native Ianguages. Between 50 and 60 parents take English classes at the school.

"Our kids come in without knowing the ABCs, with no books at take English classes at the school, home, little parent support, years behind grade level, " she said.

"In order to get the language they need, when they enter kindergarten, they should have heard 2,000 hours of the language," Scott said. Once in school, it takes five to six years to really understand nuances and wording differences on the test. Posters to familiarize students with particular phrases used by the TerraNova are hanging around the school.

Fall testing also causes problems for the students, she said.

"Students lose their language over the summer. At least let the students have a year of fourth grade before they take the fourth-grade test."

Kids more at risk

At two other at-risk schools, shifts in student population have had effects on learning.

Lemmon Valley Elementary has lost about 75 students to the new charter school, Sierra Nevada Academy, which had classes in two churches in the area this year.

As a result, the school has lost its dean and its reading-resource teacher, Principal Steve Voss said. Its counselor is part-time, visiting the school three times a week.

Three years ago, an ambitious reading teacher launched a successful Reading Chains program, which pairs small numbers of students grouped by their reading level with adults to read daily. But losing the teacher position this year because of the drop in population killed the program, Voss said.

The school has not had such low scores before and never has received extra money for improvement. Extra money might be spent on books and tests for the computer-based Accelerated Reader program, he said.

Lois Allen Elementary in Sun Valley has had a shift in its population, Principal Gini Cooper-Watts said.

"The economy is having an influence. A lot of our families have been able to purchase new homes in Lifestyle Homes and Spanish Springs," she said. Those families have moved out of the Allen zone.

Families replacing them are poorer, she said. The school's rate of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, an indicator of poverty, has risen from 55 percent to 64 percent in a year.

In addition, Cooper-Watts expects about 145 students to come from the new Boulder Creek Apartments.

"These students have not had Success For All (the school's reading program). "In some ways, we'll be starting all over again."