About 14 years ago, Teresa Garcia couldn’t speak much English, let alone read or write it.

She had just come to the United States with her children from Mexico. When she moved to Washington, she enrolled them at Twin Lakes Elementary School and Lakota Middle School.

“When I came here, and when they started school, I was not able to communicate with the teacher,” Garcia said. “I didn’t understand [the] expectation for me, as a parent; I didn’t know how to read information they were sending home. I didn’t understand how to help my kids, especially on English class.”

Now, her children attend Panther Lake Elementary and Todd Beamer High School, and Garcia is on her way to becoming fluent in English. She’s also a parent advocate with OneAmerica, a nonprofit that supports immigrant communities, and has been working to encourage school systems’ implementation of language access in public education.

Garcia’s mission aligns with OneAmerica’s most recent support of a complaint against the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, which was filed by a class from the Seattle University Law School on Jan. 21.

The class, led by professor James Rosenfeld, worked with Ginger Kwan, the executive director of Open Doors for Multicultural Families, to include testimonies from families affected by the lack of access to their children’s school’s communications in their own language. Open Doors for Multicultural Families is based out of Kent.

“This is not only about me and my kids, this is around my community,” Garcia said. “This is about every immigrant in my school and in my school district and city.”

Garcia said other families she’s spoken to are afraid to talk to their child’s teachers, principals or school district officials because they’re not confident in their English-speaking skills and do not believe that their concerns will be heard.

And that fear, she said, can turn into apathy.

“They’ll lose interest, and they do not want to go back because why [would] they go back if nobody can speak with them?” Garcia asked. “Our children are learning, and it’s different in how we got educated in our country, not just Mexico, every single immigrant in this country and city.”

With Superintendent Tammy Campbell’s presence in the Federal Way school district, Garcia said she’s “felt heard” and has noticed an emphasis on language access. There are also schools, such as Sunnycrest Elementary, which offers a full education in Spanish, and Illahee, a middle school, that offers Spanish classes.

District spokeswoman Kassie Swenson said the Federal Way school district “goes beyond its legal obligations and continually seeks ways to provide interpreters when possible.” She added that there are many district-wide communications offered in Spanish, Russian and Korean, the district’s top three non-English languages aside.

“During Superintendent Dr. Campbell’s 100-day entry plan, she heard from parents and families about the need for more access to interpreters,” Swenson said. “Responding quickly to this concern, Dr. Campbell and her team applied for a Race to the Top Deep Dive 3 grant to establish a parent academy available in multiple languages to assist parents with how to better navigate the school system and how to best support their child’s educational needs.”

The school district also has a new website that allows web content to be translated into multiple languages and always welcomes feedback from parents.

“In my daughter’s school the family liaison started an ambassadors program, and volunteer parents (like me), we’re helping when we can,” Garcia said. “But the necessity is bigger than this.”

Hence the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction complaint, which addresses the issue statewide.

The complaint alleges a systemic violation in laws and regulations governing the provision of special education, which is based off of the Office of Education Ombuds Feasibility Study for Foreign Language Educational Interpreter Training and Certification, “Providing Language Access Services for Limited English Proficient Parents in Washington Schools.”

According to OneAmerica, the study’s findings are aligned with one of their own reports, “Breaking Down Education Barriers.” In the survey, they identified 55 percent of parents who received written, translated materials from schools; however, 72 percent of students said that their parents asked them to interpret those communications, which is a “direct violation of the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights guidelines.”

“We believe the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction has knowingly permitted, and continues to permit, a systemic violation of Part B of the IDEA by failing to require that Washington state schools assure the provision of language services needed by parents of students with disabilities having limited English proficiency…,” the complaint states. “Without these language services (interpreting, translating, and sight translating)… parents cannot knowledgeably participate in and consent to each of the critical procedural milestones specified in IDEA – identification, eligibility determination, IEP development or dispute resolution – thereby denying these children a free appropriate public education.”

The complaint includes 10 parents who have corroborated the allegations. Three of them are from Federal Way and speak Somali and Cambodian.

Students speak approximately 113 languages, including English, in the Federal Way school district.

The complaint asks the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to consider providing more access to the top nine most-spoken language groups by no later than Sept. 1, 2017. Just over 235 languages are spoken by families in the entire state of Washington’s public schools.

Kristen Jaudon, an Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction spokeswoman, confirmed that the complaint was received and that there has been an investigator assigned to look into the allegations.