Faced with the 30% increase in the 1990s in the number of New Yorkers with problems speaking English, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott announced yesterday the city is committing $1.8 million to family literacy services.

“We expect that with private matching support, close to $3 million in additional funding will increase literacy and promote educational attainment, assist New Yorkers seeking permanent residency or citizenship, and strengthen families,” Mr. Walcott said.

With about one in four New Yorkers – or 1.5 million – reporting problems speaking English in the 2000 census and overcrowded language classes throughout the city, there is no question the supply of such classes is lagging far behind demand. Moreover, the groups with the highest rates of difficulty with English – Chinese, Mexicans, and Dominicans – also have the highest birth rates, according to the Department of City Planning. The combination has created a path to intergenerational language problems.

Family literacy programs are an increasingly popular approach to English-as-a-second-language instruction in the city, with the objective of strengthening proficiency in adults while engaging them in common learning experiences with their children.

Last year, New York became the first municipality to sponsor such programs, according to the commissioner of the city Department of Youth and Community Development, Jeanne Mullgrav. With $1 million from tax-levy funding and a $300,000 grant from the Toyota Family Literacy Program, the city opened 10 family literacy programs, with centers in each borough.

The vision is to establish such programs in every city school, Ms. Mullgrav said. “Right now some of the larger, well-heeled programs are in Manhattan, and we really need to grow it in places with burgeoning communities like Queens and Brooklyn,” she said.

The push for family literacy programs is needed “because in families is how people learn best,” said the director of the Literacy Assistance Center, Elyse Rudolph. The center serves as an umbrella research group for many of the programs that teach English in the city. “If you want third-graders to read on level, it’s a really important way to do it. You need to have a newspaper in the house.”

The funding announcement was made at the second Immigrant Family Literacy summit, a new public-private alliance for teaching English to the city’s newcomers. The meeting was convened by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development,

the New York Times Company Foundation, and the Literacy Assistance Center. The New York Times Foundation has pledged to match 50 cents for every $1 committed to family literacy.

As the summit took place, hundreds of immigrants and their advocates marched at City Hall and demanded more funding for services, including increased support for English classes for adult immigrants.

“Despite the innumerable contributions immigrants make to the city, Mayor Bloomberg has actually cut the number of ESL classes for immigrants so that it is now below the number that was available 10 years ago,” said the executive director of the Latin American Integration Center, Ana Maria Archila. “At current funding levels, only 5% of immigrants who need classes can find a program to accept them and tens of thousands of immigrants are turned away.”

Even with the mayor’s allocation and matching private funds, some community leaders are criticizing it as too narrow in scope and far short of the $10 million they had requested from the city for immigration services this year.

“Immigrants have been waiting for years for the mayor to put some money on the table for immigrant services,” said the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, Margie McHugh. “Any money is better than none, but it is a disappointment for English classes, immigrant legal services, and worker legal services that he has put money in only one.”

Next Friday the commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, Guillermo Linares, will convene a one day strategic planning session with city agencies, foundations, and service providers. “What we’re doing is guided by all the new changes in New York,” Mr. Linares said. “Minimizing language barriers for immigrant New Yorkers continues to be a priority.”