Long Island Latino Teachers Association lands $347,500 in state funding

After 18 years, a nonprofit dedicated to closing educational gaps on Long Island has funds to start house-hunting.

The Long Island Latino Teachers Association, a Central Islip-based nonprofit dedicated to bolstering high school graduation rates and higher education enrollment and completion among the Island’s growing Latino student population, is receiving $347,500 in state grant funds, officials announced Saturday.

A portion of those funds — $120,000 — has been earmarked for LILTA to “establish a permanent home base … for community engagement and student enrichment,” according to a news release from Deputy State Assembly Speaker Phil Ramos (D-Brentwood), who presented the organization with a check Saturday in Central Islip.

“We were established in 2006; it’s been a number of years that we’ve been serving the community,” LILTA president Dafny Irizarry said in a telephone interview Friday. “We are happy to now start looking for a home so our children can visit and families can receive services and opportunities in our own home.”

LILTA is composed of about 200 members who Irizarry said are mostly people who identify as Latino and mostly teachers. Administrators, social workers and members of various racial and ethnic backgrounds round out its ranks.

Each year, the nonprofit hosts conferences — Women Leaders Paving Paths for Young Women and Men Leaders Paving Paths for Young Men — each attended by about 300 high school students from across Long Island. Irizarry said the conferences are designed to inspire kids to complete their high school education and pursue a college career.

The organization also provides 10 scholarships every year to students pursuing careers in education, which Irizarry said is “a commitment to diversify the teaching profession.”

The remaining $227,500 of state funding LILTA will receive will help expand current programing and add conferences and services, both dedicated to mental health for students and their families as well as civics, Irizarry said.

“We do know that mental health is an important issue in having our students be successful at school and in their careers and futures,” she said.

Regarding introducing students to the world of local government, Irizarry added that LILTA started civics-based programing “last year, but due to limited funding, we can’t expose them as much as we’d like to.”

On Long Island, the Hispanic population rose 1.1% between July 1, 2022, and July 1, 2023, growing by an estimated 6,871 people, for a total population in Nassau and Suffolk counties of 610,696, according to a Newsday analysis of census data.

In recent years, Irizarry believes, schools have become “very mindful” of the gap between the growing number of Spanish-speaking students and families in communities, and the resources available to them, as well as teachers and faculty who share similar languages and cultures.

“Especially during the pandemic, this was something that was very exposed,” Irizarry said. “The language gap, the digital gap, all of these issues came to light in a way that we probably did not see before.”

With Joseph Ostapiuk and Olivia Winslow