New law takes effect in California classrooms

LOS ANGELES — Teacher Isabel Rodriguez was nervous and frustrated Monday as she looked upon the bright faces of her 18 first graders starting a new session of year-round school.

"They’re anxious anyway because it’s their first day of school, and I was unable to console them in their language," said Ms. Rodriguez, 28, who teaches at Theresa Hughes Elementary School. "So I had to use simple, basic words in English to tell them that everything will be all right."

Ms. Rodriguez’s feelings of insecurity, confusion and even anger were shared by teachers throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest, as 19,700 students started new semesters at 50 schools. A year-round schedule staggers the school year for the district’s 681,000 students to maximize space.

Of those students who started school Monday, less than half are fluent in English.

The session will give teachers, students and parents their first look at how California’s new bilingual education law will work in the classroom. Voters in June overwhelmingly approved Proposition 227, which virtually eliminated bilingual education classes with its decree that children in the nation’s most populous state should be taught "overwhelmingly" in English.

Critics say the law is the latest strike against immigrants in California, where voters have already stripped illegal immigrants of health, education and welfare benefits, and the University of California has banned affirmative action.

The law requires that children who have limited English ability be put in a one-year immersion course. After 30 days, parents can get a waiver to put their child back in bilingual education under limited conditions. There are an estimated 312,000 students with limited English proficiency in the Los Angeles district.

"They should have done something about it years ago," said parent Sylvia Velaz, whose 9-year old daughter, Jasmine, attends fourth grade at Hughes. "I don’t think bilingual education works very well. If they’re kept in an environment where they’re speaking Spanish all the time, it won’t do anything."

Most school districts in California do not reopen until September. But the schools in Los Angeles Unified began a new year-round track Monday, forcing teachers, students and parents to struggle early with the question of how to make the transition as painless as possible.

"It’s more emotional than hectic," said Esther Castruita, principal at Hughes Elementary, where the student population is 99 percent Latino. "We are bidding farewell to a very dear friend, a bilingual friend that we believe in. It’s like mourning, but now the denial phase is over. We don’t allow ourselves to stay on that side because then we can’t move forward."

Instead, they will try to make the best of it, she said, vowing that Hughes Elementary would become one of the "best Proposition 227 schools" in the Los Angeles area. The school is located in the small working class city of Cudahy, southwest of downtown Los Angeles. The city contracts with the district for school services.

In Lucia Espinoza’s combination second- and third-grade class at Hughes, her 13 students sat cross-legged at her feet as she read a story to them about a boy who did not like school and walked to class slowly.

"Who can show me how you walk slowly?" Ms. Espinoza asked. A boy raised his hand and shuffled across the rug in front of his classmates.

The simple exchange was a lesson in comprehension. The children did not actually say the word "slowly," but they could grasp its meaning. Later, they will learn to read it.

An immersion class is active and noisy as children learn English through visuals, such as words and pictures on the walls, role-playing, puppetry and being read to aloud.

"Children are very, very resilient," said Victor Chavira, a fourth-grade teacher at Hughes. "They will adapt. But how well they adapt remains to be seen. It’s a gray area.&quot



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