Las Américas Newcomer School

Las Américas serves newly arrived refugees and other immigrants, aiming to adjust them to the American lifestyle and educational system.

Patrick Michels, a staff writer for the Texas Observer, wrote in Politico that the school "has become a model for the holistic education a large newcomer population requires, challenges cities all over the country are facing",[2] and that Las Américas is the school that most "embodies" "That Houston is where so much of the world makes its American arrival is the city’s great challenge and its great opportunity.

In the 2014-2015 school year Las Américas Newcomer had 325 students, three times the normal enrollment, because 4,000 children who had fled El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras settled in the Houston area in the summer of 2014.

[2] As of 2015 countries of origins of the students included: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Burma (Myanmar), Burundi, Colombia, Chile, China, Cameroon, Congo, Cuba, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, India, Kenya, Liberia, Mexico, Mozambique, Nepal, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan (including the Darfur region), Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zambia.

[14] As of 2015 students who have been enrolled in the school have spoken the following languages natively: Amharic, Arabic, Burmese, Cantonese, Dzongkha, French, Fur, Hindi, Kanuri, Karen, Kibembe, Kʼicheʼ (Quiché), Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kunama, Lingala, Luganda, Mandarin Chinese, Mandinka (Mandingo), Nepali, Oromo, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Somali, Spanish (Castellano), Swahili, Tigrinya, Urdu, and Vietnamese.