HAZLETON, Pa. — Inside the Hazleton One Community Center on East Fourth Street in Luzerne County, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) spent Wednesday hearing about discrimination in the community.
Hazleton residents are relaying their stories of discrimination within the community so the commission can try to find ways to overcome it.
"Our school district has become heavily Latino in the student population, you know. You're talking in terms of 2/3 of our students being Latino. The disproportionate situation with the staff is that our staff is virtually non-bilingual," said Robert Childs, member of Hazleton School Board & Advisory Council.
Childs said this language barrier causes many miscommunications between Spanish-speaking parents and students. Officials from the PHRC said they chose to hold this event in Hazleton because of the number of discrimination complaints they've received from the community within the education system and beyond. Now, their goal is to match those numbers to the stories and create change.
Arlin Reinoso said she's experienced discrimination in many ways. She said her car was recently wrongly towed. The lack of communication because of the language barrier resulted in her having to pay over $1,000 just to get it back.
Rienoso said she communicated with the little English she knew and tried using Google translate but was still turned away. She hopes the program can make bilingual speakers or translators a requirement in workplaces, considering the growing population of Spanish-speaking citizens in Hazleton.
"One of my goals is to is to manage to get bilingual staff that is able to communicate with the parents especially, but also with the students. I think that will stop a whole lot of questions that are being raised by the PHRC today," added Childs.
The PHRC will be at the Hazleton One Community Center again on Friday to hear more stories from the community.