Fresno Unified targeted for its bilingual program

Anxious Fresno Unified School District administrators have spent months preparing for the week ahead.

Beginning today, state and federal officials will scrutinize how effectively the district educates the 25,000 Fresno students that speak little or no English.

“I’ve done everything humanly possible, and I feel good about the district’s progress,” said multilingual/multicultural director Barbara Carrillo.

“We don’t think there will be any surprises in the reviews,” she said. “The people at the schools are well-informed and prepared, and we know our strengths and shortcomings.”

Since last June, Carrillo and other administrators have been busy retraining teachers and revamping bilingual programs to comply with laws demanding that all children have equal access to the education basics, no matter what language they speak.

Fresno Unified faces more problems than most because it is one of the most diverse in the nation, with pupils that speak more than 100 languages.

The multilingual department itself will be the first department to be reviewed. Investigators then will turn their attention to Norseman Elementary School on Tuesday, Baird Elementary School on Wednesday and Roosevelt High School Thursday and Friday.

State officials reviewed all three schools in 1991. They were intentionally selected again so officials could measure the district’s progress.

Review team

The civil-rights division of the U.S. Department of Education will do most of the investigating this week.

The review team will be composed of a chief federal investigator, a federal attorney and at least one official from the California Department of Education.

The group will spend an entire day at each school, sitting in on classes, interviewing teachers and talking with bilingual assistants.

Nine additional schools will be evaluated May 10-19. They are Ewing, Homan, Lincoln and Muir elementary schools, Fort Miller, Kings Canyon and Scandinavian middle schools and Edison and McLane high schools.

Results of the school reviews will not be made public until May 19, when the state plans to release a preliminary report.

The civil-rights report could take as long as five months to complete.

Federal sources say the investigation was prompted by a series of informal complaints, though district officials maintain that they are unaware of such complaints, and say the district was chosen simply because one-third of its 78,000 students do not speak English.

In November 1994, the Office of Civil Rights sent a letter to Superintendent Chuck McCully informing him that the district’s bilingual programs were being targeted for evaluation.

Specifically, the department wanted to see whether the programs complied with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin and other federal education policies.

The letter also asked for extensive documentation and details about the district’s bilingual program.

Among the requests were:

* A complete list of credentials and certifications for all teachers in the district.

* A description of how students were determined to have limited proficiency in English and how they are redesignated once they become fluent.

* A description of how the district charts the academic progress of non-English-speaking students.

* A description of the district’s policy when parents ask that their child be removed from a bilingual program.

* A description of how English is taught to students who are not native speakers.

* The number of students at the 12 selected schools who don’t speak English and how much English-language instruction they receive.

* Recent report cards from all middle and high school bilingual students that received D’s or F’s.

* Proof that parents of students in a bilingual program are properly notified about important school activities.

That information was sent to the office of civil rights in March.

Heidi Estep, the district’s assessment director, helped the principals prepare their schools for the review.

“I think the major concern at the different school sites right now is that . . . they want this review to come and go in the least disruptive manner possible so they can get back to their major task of educating the students,” she said.

“But obviously they have a little anxiety as well, because they are dealing with an unknown at this point.”

Review in 1991

When state officials came to the district for a routine review in 1991, they determined that the district did not have enough bilingual teachers and had too many untrained teachers instructing non-English-speaking students.

Parents were also not properly informed when their children were placed in bilingual classes, according to a report of findings compiled by the state.

The district also was found lacking in tutors who speak another language, and used the ones it did have for no more than three-and-a-half hours a day.

A tracking report later issued by the state showed that all areas of noncompliance were “eventually resolved through documentation.”

However, district officials have said repeatedly that the challenge of hiring credentialed bilingual teachers is greater than the available supply, and said they expected to be found noncompliant in staffing this year.



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