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Fremont Meeting Tonight Dana Hull Because of declining enrollment, the Fremont Unified School District may cut in half the number of schools that offer a bilingual education program for Spanish-speaking students. Currently the bilingual education program is offered at six elementary schools. The district is weighing whether to reduce that to five schools or as few as three. District officials say a drop in enrollment in the early grades means that the bilingual program must be concentrated at fewer campuses in order to survive. Many young families, including Latinos, are being priced out of the Bay Area because of the region's high cost of living, and there has been a dip in kindergarten and elementary registrations for bilingual education. The district is also facing sweeping demographic changes. Just 14 percent of Fremont's 31,000 students are Hispanic, while nearly 40 percent are Asian. A meeting for parents of bilingual students is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. today at Blacow Elementary School, 40404 Sundale Drive. Bilingual or "immersion" instruction for native Spanish speakers is available at Azevada, Blacow, Cabrillo, Durham, Grimmer, and Vallejo Mill elementary schools. "We need to get parental input before we make any recommendations," said Juan Espinosa, the district's director of federal and state projects. "But we've had some declining enrollment and a lot of student mobility. It's hard to sustain the program if you don't have enough students at each school." "Mobility" refers to students who change schools because their families move. High mobility rates make it difficult for students to excel in the bilingual immersion program, because they may change schools in the middle of the year. The immersion program gradually moves students from learning in their native Spanish to English, with the goal of becoming fluent in both languages. The program is also open to students who speak English at home but want to begin studying Spanish as a second language at an early grade. In kindergarten, 90 percent of classroom instruction is taught in Spanish and 10 percent is in English. Each year, the ratio changes: 80-20 in first grade, 70-30 in second grade, and so on, until the ratio is 50-50. "Any principal would love to have a program like this," said Patti Purcell, principal at Azevada Elementary School. "But for the program to be effective you need to have a mix of students. It would be perfect if half the students were native Spanish speakers and half were English speakers." District officials say they are committed to the program and would like tosee it thrive. But the ratio of many fourth-grade classes is 30 students to one teacher, and at some campuses there are not enough students enrolled to maintain that ratio and financially justify offering a class. "The changing demographics are certainly a factor," said Espinosa. "You also have to consider that this is a high-cost area to live in, and families who are making marginal incomes are moving away." Espinosa said his office will do more to recruit English-speaking students to the program. At a recent school board meeting, some Fremont parents said they would like their children to begin learning a second language in elementary school. |