Eight years ago, when Moriah Hamler was in the second grade, most of her Whitehall classmates looked a lot like her.

Not anymore.

Whitehall has experienced a greater change than any school district in Franklin County.

One in 10 students is foreignborn and 9 percent spend at least part of their school day learning English. Forty-one percent are nonwhite.

"There’s an equal amount of everybody there," said Hamler, 16, a freshman at Whitehall-Yearling High School.

"It’s who they are, not what color they are, that counts."

Moriah’s sister, Amanda, a seventh-grader at Rosemore Middle School, said the growing diversity is a plus.

"It’s taught me to respect other people’s cultures," she said.

Other Franklin County districts also have seen significant influxes of foreign-born and nonwhite students.

Westerville has enrolled 535 non-English-speaking students in the past two years and expects to top 1,000 before the end of the school year. Right now, 7 percent of students are learning English.

South-Western officials said they were stunned this year when 255 international students enrolled — 60 of them in October — raising the number of those learning English to 7 percent.

Acceptance has come "step by step," said Rahma Jama, 18, a senior at Franklin Heights High School in South-Western schools.

Jama, a native of Somalia, moved to Columbus in 1998.

"I am happy that I’m here, but I want to keep my roots."

Unlike earlier waves of immigrant children, today’s often want to maintain their native culture and dress, said Linda Wait, a Whitehall schools administrator.

Jama said she used to feel lost between two cultures.

"I like to think I have the good and bad from both sides."

This new diversity has ushered in an era of international dinners, cultural exchanges and food fairs.

"Others get to see our culture, and people understand why we dress the way we do," Jama said.

It wasn’t always that way. She said classmates in elementary school taunted her for the clothes she wore and her limited English. She still wears scarves, but now with more American-style skirts.

"Everybody gets along," said classmate Darwin Menjivar, 17, who left Honduras in 2002.

At Westerville North High School, Somali enrollment doubled this year.

Principal Curt Jackowski said the change has been good for the school.

"A lot of times we may take our education for granted," he said. "When you see kids thirsting for an education, it reiterates the fact we are here to learn."

At Westerville South, Principal Keith Bell said the changes require a firm, compassionate hand.

"You have to have patience and sensitivity," he said. "There has to be a middle ground, but they have to understand this is America and this is what we do here."

International students represent the smaller numbers behind the growing diversity in suburban districts.

During the past seven years, 10 of Franklin County’s 16 suburban districts have at least doubled their nonwhite enrollment.

In Whitehall, more than two in five students are black, Asian, Hispanic or multicultural; in Reynoldsburg and Groveport, one in three.

For these districts, the financial costs of diversity are high and growing. School boards have had to hire more teachers and tutors, and buy supplies to meet the needs of their new students.

Whitehall had one full-time and one part-time English-language teacher. There are now eight full-time teachers.

Last summer, the district offered an English-language class and 18 first-graders enrolled — enough for their own class.

"We’re trying to support students and parents wherever we can," Wait said.

The higher costs moved Westerville Superintendent George Tombaugh to ask the General Assembly last year for more money. He estimated that the district spends an average of $1,600 more on each Englishlanguage student.

The legislature earmarked $12.5 million, but only poor districts are eligible.

In November, Tombaugh asked for money in the budget corrections bill for districts such as Westerville that don’t meet the financial requirement, but have more than 300 English-language students.

Columbus spent $10.5 million last year on its international enrollment — 10 times what it spent in 2000, said Michael Straughter, district spokesman.

For Menjivar, acceptance has come with time and effort.

He said once students learn English, opportunities open up and misunderstandings tend to disappear.

Menjivar, who plays varsity soccer for Franklin Heights, said his team has a number of international students, but that the common language is English.

"When we’re on the team, we forget about race," he said. "We just play."

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Source: Columbus Dispatch, Jan. 23, 2006