Short notice: N.L. school district prepares for Syrian children

The Newfoundland and Labrador English School District (NLESD) is scrambling to accommodate an influx of Syrian children who arrived on short notice.

Over Christmas, 19 government-sponsored families, with close to 50 school-aged children, arrived in St. John's.

Other privately sponsored families are settling in other communities like Corner Brook.

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Darrin Pike, CEO of NLESD, says students will be assigned to schools once they are settled in to permanent housing.

"Once we know that, we can start to deploy our resources accordingly," Pike told CBC's Here & Now Tuesday.

Pike said the school district is used to accommodating children from other cultures.

About 350 refugee and immigrant children are already in classrooms around the province.

"We'll do an assessment, primarily for English language, so extra deployment of English language support, and then other supports as needed," Pike said.

He said what's new in this situation is the relatively large group that arrived at the same time, with less than a week's notice.

It also takes time to determine when the children were last in school and what they have experienced during their time in refugee camps.

"They might need some special education supports, guidance supports, educational speech language," said Pike.

"Typically it takes us a little while to determine the other supports because you're starting out with getting the communication working out well."