Russellville City Schools Superintendent Dr. Heath Grimes awarded for work with students

Command.

New at four the russellville city school superintendent is being recognized for his work with english as a second language students.

Waay 31's alex torres-perez learned more about the award the superintendent received... and what he plans on doing to further help his students.

5 min "we are committed to our ell and we are advocating for our students every day."

Russellville city schools has one of the highest number of english language learners in the state!

Right now -- 26 percent of students are classified as e- l-l.

Nearly half of the students in the program are at an elementary level.

But superintendent dr. heath grimes has had great success with 48 percent of students advancing out of the program!

"it's really just because of the efforts that myself and a lot of other people working with me have made to improve the awareness of what it means to have a significant population of english language learners in our state and in our district and how we can better accommodate," the university of alabama at birmingham's school of education awarded grimes with the outstanding service award for advocating for his students.

He's been pushing for more professional development opportunities and funding for his students.

7:48 "it's a huge honor to receive an award from a distinguished university such as uab" 10:30 i'm honored.

I was surprised, but more than anything i'm glad we're making an impact.

The district used to receive about 100 dollars in state funding per student in 2017 through 2018.

Last school year -- they received around 400 dollars per student!

But grimes says they need more help.

"understanding the need of what it costs to educate an english language learner and how there are more resources that are needed, especially in personnel.

We need more el teachers and more el aides and translators, all those things are extremely important in a district that has this percentage of english language learners, alex torres perez waay 31 news there is already a program in place that aims to bring more e-l-teachers.

It's through a partnership with the oxford teachers academy.

The program allows community members to work in schools while taking classes online to become certified teachers.

Grimes recently made another major accomplishment.

He graduated with his doctorate last week.

He says he looks forward to helping not only his current students -- but all students across