Meriden Asks State for Some Leeway

Flexibility urged for bilingual plans

MERIDEN—School board members are asking the state for more flexibility in creating and administering bilingual-education programs, which they claim are inefficient and often counterproductive.

Board Chairman Frank Kogut said that under the current system, students frequently stay in the program five or six years, and still are not proficient in English when they graduate.

“We have to find a mechanism where we can get them out of the program quicker,” he said. “Right now, I’ve heard of students’ being in the program for six years. We have got to give them a crash course, and not let them stay in this program for years on end.”

While agreeing on the merits of a bilingual program, board members said the priority should be for the students to learn English as quickly as possible. If given a strict time limit, board members say, the parents and students would respond quicker.

“I have always been amazed at the parent who chooses to have their children mainstreamed and that student is usually functioning in positive ways within six to eight months,” board member Robert Kosienski Jr. said. “But right now, they are coming in at a very early age, like kindergarten or first grade, and staying in that program until the middle-school and high school years.”

“So there is a lot to be said about mainstreaming as soon as possible,” he said.

The state Department of Education mandates that if a local system or regional district has a school with 20 or more children classified as limited in English proficiency, the system is required to have a bilingual program.

Board members met with several local state legislators last week and implored them to devise a way to empower the board to make changes in bilingual programs.

“Any kind of legislation to do away with bilingual programs as it stands, or make changes . . . I would appreciate,” Kosienski said.

The legislators promised to look into the issue.

Meriden’s school district is one-third Hispanic, and has 405 students in its bilingual-education program, said Fernando M. Tiago, supervisor of the 18- year-old bilingual-education program for the system. Most make the grade within three years, he said.

“I think that the objective of a bilingual program is to make the transition from their native language to English as soon as possible,” Tiago said. “Our approach to bilingual education is . . . to teach courses in their native language so that the children do not fall behind in academic areas like science, social studies and math.”

“This is so that the knowledge and skills can be transferred into the English language,” he said.

Tiago said most students who are in the program for four years or longer are learning disabled or have other problems, which complicates their learning.

Board member Connie Soboleski said that although the program started off with good intentions, it has degenerated into a crutch for students.

“We are told by the teachers who have worked in the program that if there is a strenuous program of learning English for two years, the child can then be mainstreamed into the regular program and adapt from there,” she said.

“Now, however, we are seeing children get into the program and basically get labeled for the rest of their life,” Soboleski said. “Except now, we call it English as a second language or language deficient.”

Jean Romano, director of bilingual education for Windham Public Schools, which also has about 400 students, said she heard the same criticism during her program’s early years.

“There is a political awareness of how many mandates the state has [issued] but have not properly funded,” she said. “I would think the economics of the issue is what is driving the criticism, not hostility toward the kids — I hope.”



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