Attorneys for a group of Madera parents are asking state authorities to investigate their complaints about a junior high school’s bilingual program.

The dispute at Thomas Jefferson school has been simmering since February, when three students complained of poor classrooms and instructional materials and their feeling of isolation from the rest of the campus.

Since then, the bilingual program’s approximately 180 bilingual Spanish students were moved to new classrooms. School officials have been meeting with a parent group periodically and say they have made progress addressing the parents’ concerns.

But parents say too little is happening too slowly, and that a new crop of children will be affected by inequities when school starts Aug. 29.

“It’s been six months since we started, and except for the new classrooms we’ve gained nothing,” said Margarita Muniz, who heads the parent group. “We want a response that says what they’re going to do and when they’re going to do it.”

Attorneys for California Rural Legal Assistance, representing parents, filed papers with the state Department of Education last month requesting an investigation. But Madera Unified School District officials are opposing the request, arguing that they have not had sufficient time to respond to parents.

“We think we can resolve it at our level,” Superintendent George Bloch said. “We think there are some areas we’re showing improvement on, and other areas we want to remedy right away.”

Bloch said the district had set no timeline for resolving parents’ concerns.

Joe Vived, the school’s principal, said the district had made “substantial progress” in the last several months. He gave these examples:

* Bilingual students will now be allowed to take elective classes, which previously were not available to them.

* A bilingual teacher was sent to computer training. All bilingual materials were inventoried, and about $ 11,000 was spent on new materials.

* The isolation problem was addressed by moving two bilingual classes onto the main campus. Two other bilingual classes remain in a separate wing.

* The bilingual science teacher was moved into an equipped science classroom.

* The school has redesigned its process for moving children from bilingual classes into the mainstream. Before, that happened only once a year. Now, teachers and counselors are expected to work more closely and notify parents when they believe a child is ready for mainstream classes.

One of the attorneys representing the parents, Ellen Braff-Guajardo, said state action was necessary to force the district to move in a timely manner.

“Without the intervention of the state, the school district is going to be agreeable and just meet and meet and meet,” she said. “Then these kids are going to be starting school again, and the problems still won’t be resolved.”

In a letter Braff-Guajardo sent to the state last month, she set out 17 specific complaints about the bilingual program. The complaints included allegations of poor record-keeping and tracking of students, unqualified teachers being hired, poor teacher training, lack of materials, improperly using special funding to supplant rather than supplement materials and not advising or trying to involve Spanish-speaking parents.

A spokeswoman for the state said she had not received all the paper work yet, but that the state would have 60 days after that time to determine whether it would investigate.



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