City's bilingual policy repealed

School board eyes new plan

Despite angry shouts and emotional pleas from parents, the Boston School Committee voted last night to repeal the district’s 23-year-old bilingual education policy and moved ahead with revisions proposed by School Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant.

The changes are necessary to push the district’s bilingual education efforts forward, said Payzant, who recommended repealing the Lau Plan – a 1979 mutual agreement between the School Committee and the Bilingual Master Parents Advisory Council that did not allow policy changes unless it was approved by both parties.

”There is nothing that I have said …or that I will do to dismantle bilingual education,” Payzant said. ”There is nothing in that plan, or this plan, that says we are going to lock parents out.”

Payzant promised to produce concrete achievement for the district’s roughly 9,500 bilingual eduation students. ”We may disagree on what the repeal of the Lau Plan means symbolically,” he said. But ”it is not going to alter my commitment to stand up and be accountable to students’ results and achievement.”

The seven-member School Committee voted 5-to-1 to discard the Lau Plan. Member Susan Naimark, who had expressed concerns that parent input was lacking, did not attend the meeting, while Angel Moreno dissented.

”You are going to be sending a very negative message to the rest of the state,” Moreno said, and then referred to a statewide bilingual education initiative on the November ballot being financed by California millionaire Ron Unz that would replace bilingual education with English immersion.

Yesterday, about 40 parents and students hopped on a borrowed bus and arrived at School Department headquarters on Court Street with protest signs that read ”Save the Lau Plan,” among others. The committee heard briefly from some parents before voting.

After the vote, some parents booed while others burst into tears and walked out.

The School Committee voted to create work groups with parent representatives to help continue crafting Payzant’s new plan and bring it back to the committee for approval in September.

But some parents mourned the loss of the Lau Plan. ”It’s a real big letdown to parents,” said Enna Rojas. ”We had an agreement, we had a voice, and now it is gone.”

While keeping the range of Boston’s bilingual programs intact and promising to keep parents involved, the district’s repeal of the Lau Plan now not only gives the School Committee the flexibility to make changes to bilingual education but also limits the power parents have to go to court if school officials fail to live up to the policy.

In April 2001, several parents of Boston bilingual education students filed a suit accusing Payzant and the district of blatantly ignoring the Lau Plan. Last month, a Suffolk Superior Court judge ruled that Payzant and the School Committee did indeed violate the plan, a 100-page document revised in 1982, 1985, and most recently in 1992, which outlines everything from class size (18-to-1) to granting the parents advisory council broad authority over policy changes. The plan also required the district to conduct annual reviews of bilingual education in its schools, and assigned the parent’s advisory council two paid staff members.

Judge Ralph Gants ordered Boston school officials to comply with the Lau Plan or repeal it by July 1.

Some parents, such as Jeanette Marren, said they knew the plan was doomed so they did not attend yesterday’s meeting. School officials ”need to start improving the sensitivity of the school system toward bilingual students, especially Hispanic students,” said Marren, who is from Honduras and has three children in Boston public schools. ”Certain schools are more active or have done more things about bilingual education. But … the school system has not made it enough of a priority.”



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