Lansing Schools’ Newcomer Center looks to bridge gap for international students

MONDAY, Sept. 30 — The Lansing School District has been a gateway for foreign-born pupils, including refugees, for decades.

The district’s 10,000-pupil enrollment includes 2,011 from 72 countries who speak 55 languages, a district official said.

In August, the district opened a newly refurbished building at 301 W. Jolly Road to serve as its Newcomer Center for these students. The 7,115-square-foot property is intended to bolster the district’s efforts to help them adapt to life in their new country. Eighty students are enrolled there. 

Laux Construction split the nave of the former Mount Hope Presbyterian church into a pair of larger instructional rooms. One is pictured here.

This morning, five weeks into the center’s operations, district officials and community leaders gathered for an official ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Standing alongside more than a dozen of the center’s educators and district leaders, Lansing Schools Superintendent Ben Shuldiner dubbed the new facility a “culmination of years and years of the Lansing School District trying to put its students first.”

Shuldiner discusses the center ahead of a ribbon-cutting ceremony this morning.

“It's going to be a real symbolic change in this district,” Shuldiner said. “There's going to be a singular place, a building with amazing adults to help our students get used to and be welcomed into the district.”

The 1987 building was the former home of Mount Hope Presbyterian Church, which vacated it in 2022.

Keck discusses the district’s long history of helping foreign-born and refugee students adapt to life in Lansing.

Over the summer, Laux Construction Co. of Mason replaced its siding, gutters, HVAC system, flooring, doors and light fixtures before capping it off with a fresh coat of paint.

At today’s ceremony, Sergio Keck, deputy superintendent for special populations, said the new center’s goal was to enhance the experience for new international students to help make them and their families “feel comfortable, welcomed and supported” in their new city.

Keck cited the district’s long history of “welcoming and educating these new students, beginning with the first wave of Cuban exiles in the late 1950s and 1960s.

“The district continued to embrace students from diverse backgrounds, including the Vietnamese and Hmong populations in the 1970s, followed by students from Liberia, Somalia, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia and, more currently, from Syria, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and from Spanish speaking countries in Central America, South America and Mexico,” he added.

Keck thanked partner organizations and charities, including the Refugee Development Center, for their participation.

An image of the facility before teams at Laux Construction began work in June.

Shuldiner echoed Keck’s gratitude.

“As a superintendent new to the district, knowing that there are so many people out there who are focused on refugee services and immigration that were willing to work with us was really, really powerful,” Shuldiner said.

“Something like this is emblematic of what Lansing is doing now,” he added. “We're building new buildings and creating new programs that really should have been around forever, because this is the kind of work that we need to do to make sure that our students can succeed and thrive.”