Bilingual education reform looks to be dead in Legislature
Jon Burstein
PHOENIX - State lawmakers said "adios" yesterday to reforming Arizona's bilingual education system this year. It happened when the Republican majority on the House Education Committee voted down a Democrat-sponsored bilingual education bill. Their action almost ensures that a GOP-backed measure will fail to get out of the Senate. Both sides acknowledge that with the two bills canceling each other, the fate of bilingual education likely will rest with voters. An initiative drive was kicked off earlier this year to have Arizonans decide on the November 2000 ballot whether to abolish the program. The key dispute throughout the debate centered on the GOP proposal that calls for the state to cut off funding for bilingual education students after they spend three years in the program. That would require local school districts to pick up the tab for students continuing in it. The bill's sponsor - Rep. Laura Knaperek, R-Tempe - refused to yield on the time limit, saying it was vital to overhauling a system that has been broken for decades. Phoenix Sen. Joe Eddie Lopez, sponsor of the Democrats' bill, argued the time limit was arbitrary and would leave some children behind. Both said yesterday that the bilingual education debate is over for this legislative session. "The standstill happened sooner rather than later," Knaperek said. Lopez echoed: "It is clear that the House doesn't want to deal in any realistic way with this issue and we might as well stop these arguments at this particular time and call it quits." Lopez's original proposal called for $2.32 million in funding for more and better bilingual education teachers. It also called for the state Department of Education to evaluate every school district's program every three years. But Lopez watched in the Senate Education Committee as the funding was cut and the state oversight was reduced to only 20 school districts annually. He admitted then that the bill was gutted, but argued it was still better than Knaperek's measure. The Senate later voted 23-7 for the bill. While in the House, Knaperek's bill easily passed through the Education Committee and was approved 33-25 on the House floor. The divide between the House and Senate on bilingual education reform began publicly crystalizing Thursday when Knaperek's bill was heard by the Senate Education Committee. After a limited debate on Knaperek's measure, the Senate committee voted against it 5-4 with the committee's chairman Sen. John Huppenthal, R-Chandler, siding with the committee's four Democrats. But later in the same hearing, the committee voted 8-1 for the measure. Huppenthal said the first vote was used as leverage to keep the Lopez bill - a compromise measure - alive. But Knaperek joined five other Republicans yesterday in defeating the Lopez bill 6-5. "If the Joe Eddie Lopez bill came out of the Senate 23-7 that tells me they're on a completely different page than we are in the House," she said. Of the three Pima County lawmakers on the House committee - Republican Reps. Dan Schottel and Bill McGibbon voted against it and Democratic Rep. Marion Pickens supported it. Schottel, the committee's chair, proved to be the deciding vote. He said he couldn't approve the bill because it might fuel the group English for the Children Arizona in its initiative drive to do away with bilingual education. Ron Unz, the group's organizer, spearheaded a similar effort that passed in California last summer. "I'm afraid if the bill passes as it is that the initiative will be on the ballot and we will have no say whether there is or isn't bilingual education," Schottel said. While Knaperek and Lopez agreed bilingual education's fate probably will fall into voters' hands, they offered different predictions on how it would go. Lopez said he believed that the Arizonans, particularly the business community, will mobilize against the measure. "We are going to be energized to take on this issue, but the big difference is Arizona is not California," he said. "We have a history of working with their neighbor to the south - Mexico." Lopez said he anticipates that the business community will mobilize against it. Knaperek said she believes the initiative will pass. "Currently, they (supporters of the Lopez bill) are feeling they can beat the initiative and I think that's a bad call," she said. |