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GREENSBORO — Three bilingual staffers with the Guilford County school system's English as a Second Language Department spent their summer translating school lunch prices, calendars, schedules and news items from English into Spanish.

The results of their labor went online Friday as a Spanish-language version of the school system's Web page.

"It's such a great way to communicate with our parents," said Mayra Hayes, director of ESL for Guilford County Schools.

Hayes said the site will be invaluable to families — both parents and students — whose first language is Spanish. "If they can go to a place that they can easily access and understand, the information will benefit our populations," she said.

School system spokeswoman Haley Miller said the bilingual Web page is part of the schools' overall push to widen communication efforts with non-English speakers. Last year, the school system had 5,359 Hispanic students among nearly 70,000 total students, Miller said.

The effort includes "Tus Hijos y GCS (Your Children and Guilford County Schools)," a monthly Spanish and English language video program on local cable Channel 2 featuring district news and happenings. The district also has partnered with Que Pasa Radio to produce Tus Hijos y la Escuela, a bimonthly radio program on WWBG (1470 AM).

This year, Guilford County Schools offers its first GCS Newcomers School for recently arrived immigrant and refugee students in grades five through 12 who are novice English speakers. The school offered intensive instruction in English as a Second Language to help those students' transition to traditional schools.

"As our community becomes more diverse, we have to do things to reach out to that community," Miller said.

Plans are under way to add four more languages — Vietnamese, Urdu, Arabic and French — to the schools' Web site, Hayes said. Two school system translators currently are working on the Vietnamese version, she said.

The school system also has added a senior staff directory to its Web site, Miller said. The directory will help parents and the community find the resources they need more quickly and efficiently, she said.

Contact Tom Steadman at 373-7351 or tsteadman@news-record.com