Comit: PUSD Panel Is A Sham

Limited-English program draws more criticism

PITTSBURG—An attorney for a community activist group that has been pressing the school district to fix its bilingual-education program has sent a complaint to the state accusing the district of failing to form a required parent-staff committee.

Letters from lawyers to the Pittsburg Unified School District are not uncommon, but receiving a complaint letter from the Comit Pro Educacin the group that instigated federal and state audits of the district’s services for students learning English as a second language is especially distressing for district officials, who are rushing to prove that they are making headway.

Deborah Escobedo, attorney for the Comit, charged that the district still has not formed the districtwide and individual campus committees of parents and faculty members that have been required under state law since the 1970s. Her letter, dated March 14, was sent to the Pittsburg superintendent and board president, as well as state officials, including the California superintendent of schools.

The lack of a working district committee stems from the failure of individual school sites to form their committees, according to Escobedo.

Establishing this council, known as the District English Language Advisory Committee, was one of the many improvements prescribed by the state and federal governments.

The district has been under fire since 1999, when the Comit filed its first complaint with the state Department of Education and the federal Office of Civil Rights. The group alleged that students who weren’t fluent in English were not being served according to the law. An investigation by the two agencies confirmed the dire state of services for these students.

Until this school year, the district had failed to make many of the obligatory improvements, prompting the state Board of Education, beginning in January, to withhold monthly payments of a certain category of aid for school districts with poor students.

Since then, state and local officials say the district has made significant strides, including assessing all students who are from homes where a language other than English is spoken, and notifying parents of their child’s English abilities. In addition, the district filed paperwork with the state suggesting that it had formed the required parent-staff committee, even giving the state a roster of its members. As a reward, the state began releasing a trickle of frozen money to the district.

But one of the largest hurdles remains: By the end of this month, Pittsburg must develop a plan that will govern the English language program. If the master plan isn’t successful, the district faces further sanctions.

If the Comit’s accusation is true that the parent-staff group doesn’t yet exist the district may not be able to clear that hurdle.

Under state law, the master plan must be presented to the parent-teacher group so that it can review it and make suggestions. Carlos Muoz, the Comit co-chair, says it will be impossible for the district to fulfill that obligation because the parent-staff group is a sham, merely names on a piece of paper.

District officials say the accusations are wrong. Every school has followed the proper procedures for forming these committees, they say, and the district has made every reasonable effort to get parents to the meetings.

“It seems to me that we are bending over backward to get the parent participation to come into compliance,” said school board President Maureen Tully.

Paperwork and efforts aside, it does appear the parent-staff group is not yet organized or functioning.

The last meeting, held March 6, was nothing short of chaos.

Much of the hour-long session was spent trying to get a vote on whether the meeting would be considered an official quorum or just an informational gathering. Because there were more school officials than parents present, the vote was killed. Translations from English to Spanish and vice versa were often confusing, as the district-employed translator’s job was usurped by a parent, Leobardo Zamora. He said that he wanted the translations to be accurate, but often elaborated on the speakers’ comments. Two parents in the group blamed the school officials for the poor turnout of parents, saying it was their duty to bring parents to the meetings by whatever means necessary.

At only two of the six meetings this year have their been enough parents 11 to establish an official quorum.

At the February meeting, parents refused to sign an application for a variety of funds, including a continued supply of the aid that the state has been withholding. Muoz said that signing it would only perpetuate the myth that there was a functioning committee. Although the funding application says that the signature of the committee is required, the school board later voted to send the application anyway, citing that all kinds of programs would be affected by the loss of money. Only trustee Ruben Rosalez, who used to head the Comit Pro Educacin, opposed the decision.

The state has asked the district to send an explanation for the missing signature.

But for now, state officials say they are satisfied with the district’s documentation of staff-parent group meetings and the reassurances by the interim superintendent that the district is putting forth a good-faith effort to get the districtwide and campus committees off the ground.

“We wanted to reward the district for increasing its efforts to come into compliance,” said Stuart Greenfeld, assistant superintendent of California public instruction, referring to the release of some of the funds being withheld from the district. “That’s not to say that everything is wonderful, either,” he added.

However, Greenfeld said that state investigators will investigate the complaint lodged by the Comit and meet with parents during their next visit in April. If they find the district hasn’t made a good-faith effort to create and operate the group, the state will continue to withhold money, Greenfeld said.

Pittsburg’s interim superintendent, Jack Gyves, has also done his own informal investigation into the matter. He asked each principal to call their school’s representatives and ask why they didn’t attend the districtwide committee’s meeting.

Reports that Gyves received from the principals suggested that all the parents had known about the meeting. Many said that they were ill, out of town, or just plain forgot, he said. In addition, some had said that they were fed up with the meetings being dominated by a few parents.

Adela Bonilla, a member of the Heights Elementary School committee, was one of the parents who didn’t attend the March meeting. She said that she had been sick and it was the only districtwide committee meeting that she has missed so far, but that she shared other parents’ frustrations with the meetings.

“(Some parents) talk and talk and they don’t stop,” she said in Spanish. “We have had six meetings and nothing has been accomplished.”

Muoz is one of the parents accused of dominating the meetings.

He says that parents who are newly involved don’t understand the frustrations of those who have spent years battling the district to improve services for their children.

The fact that the master plan will be presented to the districtwide group less than a week before it is due to the state leaving parents little time to make suggestions only strengthens Muoz’s conviction that he must fight the district at every turn. The district will show parents the plan at the next group meeting March 26; the state’s deadline is March 30.

However, Muoz says he is willing to give the district a chance to “start fresh.”

Sarah Krupp covers the Pittsburg schools. Reach her at 779-7166 or [email protected].



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