4 Oakland Teachers File Civil Rights Complaint

'Bilingual' lobbying brought trouble, they say

Four bilingual teachers in Oakland filed civil rights complaints with the U.S. Department of Education yesterday amid charges by federal and state officials that Oakland’s public schools have failed to meet the needs of non-English-speaking students.

The four teachers — Gustavo Aguilar, Laura Aguirre, Rowena Leung and Howard Weisbaum — said that Oakland Unified School District administrators have retaliated and discriminated against them because of their lobbying in behalf of bilingual education.

The teachers said they have been the victims of unfair reprimands and evaluations, transfers and demotions to nonbilingual assignments and — in one instance — a dismissal.

”These are the people who are on the front lines of teaching limited-English-speaking students. Yet administrators will not listen to what is going on in their classrooms or communities,” Brad Yamauchi, a lawyer for the teachers, said during a news conference in San Francisco.

Aguirre said that she was fired in June after complaining that certain examinations — such as those for sex education classes — were conducted only in English. The other three teachers said they were partially or fully reassigned to nonbilingual teaching positions.

School administrators were unavailable for comment.

But Oakland Superintendent Pete Mesa and other school officials have contended that the district’s bilingual education program has been hindered by a statewide shortage of certified bilingual teachers.

The teachers lodged their complaints as federal, state and district officials — along with advocates for bilingual teachers, parents and students — battle over Oakland’s inability to hire more bilingual teachers.

On Tuesday, representatives for all the groups plan to meet and try to reach an agreement that would substantially increase the school district’s number of bilingual teachers, which would allow for the school district’s full financing by state and federal sources. An agreement would also avoid years of costly litigation.

Federal education officials recently threatened to cut off millions of dollars for the school district, where they say ”an entire generation” of students with little or no English-speaking skills are being denied equal access to education.

The U.S. Department of Education civil rights office also has threatened a lawsuit against Oakland school administrators to seek a federal court order that would compel the district to hire more bilingual teachers.

State education officials have already taken the unusual step of withholding $ 4.2 million from Oakland public schools for repeated violations of the state’s bilingual education requirements — the first such move against a major school district in the state.

”This time, the government means business. And the parents mean business — because their children are not getting equal access to education,” said Margaretta Lin, a lawyer for Public Advocates Inc., a public-interest law firm that previously sued the school district on behalf of immigrant students.

Lin said that although the number of ”limited-English-speaking” students in Oakland has increased by 60 percent during the past decade to 13,707 students, the number of bilingual teachers has declined by 20 percent.



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