Waukesha — A bulletin board inside the front door of White Rock Elementary School carried two messages in bold letters one mid-December day.

The first was “Happy Holidays” and “Feliz Navidad.”

Its unwritten, second message: This is a bilingual school.

That comes clear in other signs and construction-paper cutout letters in English and Spanish throughout the school, not to mention the chatter that drifts out of open classroom doors.

” Every child at White Rock will have some Spanish — at least pronunciation and some culture,” even those who don’t count it as their native language, said White Rock Principal Carlos Gamino.

Still, as the Waukesha School District’s — and the county’s — only bilingual school, White Rock’s difference from the district’s other elementary schools is more than just its nomenclature, in which children more often than not are referred to as ninos.

Two years ago, the school was one of the first in the district to add all- day kindergarten, which since has been expanded to almost every elementary school in the city. That year, the school also added school uniforms — the only Waukesha school to do so — and started reducing class sizes under the state’s Student Achievement Guarantee in Education program.

White Rock has introduced these features in a county where white, affluent children and mostly traditional teaching techniques dominate. The school also faces unique challenges.

In addition to hosting much of Waukesha’s bilingual population, and the related task of teaching children a new language while instructing them in academic subjects, the school struggles with what educators call mobility — students whose education is disrupted by movement from school to school. Of this year’s three classes of third-graders, Gamino estimates only half were at White Rock as kindergartners.

Historically, about three- quarters of the students have come from low-income homes, based on federal standards. And many have parents who, because of work schedules and language barriers, find it hard to oversee their children’s homework.

Yet, the district holds the White Rock students to pretty much the same standards as their counterparts in Waukesha’s 22 other public schools.

Two years ago, when the percentage of fourth-graders in the school who scored proficient or above on the reading, language arts and math sections of the state’s standardized test dipped to under 30%, district officials ordered the school to improve.

“It’s not fair, but what other options do we have?” Gamino said of the expectations for his students.

Improved scores

Recent results show the school’s efforts may have paid off.

Last school year, 58% of White Rock fourth-graders scored in the top two categories — proficient or advanced — on the reading section of the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination, compared to 28% two years before. Forty percent scored in the top half for language arts, compared to 16% in 1997-’98. And 45% of those students placed in the upper two categories for math, compared to 11% before.

In each of those school years, about 25% of the students in that grade were exempted, either because of limited English proficiency, special-education status or parents who opted them out.

If a school’s success is based on how many parents choose it for their children, then White Rock is doing very well.

With 387 students from pre-kindergarten through sixth grade, the school is 12 above its capacity, Gamino said.

In a given year, 130 to 170 of the school’s students are bused from attendance boundaries for other Waukesha schools, most heavily from Whittier, Saratoga, Randall and Lowell, said Heidi Laabs, area administrator in charge of curriculum and instruction for the district.

Some of those are non-Spanish-speaking students whose parents want their children exposed to the diverse language and cultural experience offered by the school. But most of those children live in Spanish-speaking homes, which are scattered throughout Waukesha, Laabs said.

Opportunities seen

With her Spanish interpreted by an aide at the school, Maria Gomez said she has chosen White Rock for her five children “because there’s lots of opportunities here. . . . They can learn both the English and Spanish. They won’t forget their own culture.”

If her children were not at White Rock, they might attend Whittier, which serves the part of the city where Gomez lives.

Many parents, especially those who don’t speak English, also choose the school for themselves, district officials said.

In addition to a teaching staff that is about two-thirds bilingual, the school has a bilingual secretary, librarian, psychologist and aides. Gamino, the school’s principal, also speaks Spanish.

That makes a huge difference because parents are less likely to be intimidated and more likely to become involved in the school, administrators say. And when parents are more involved, their children do better.

“That’s a tremendous asset for that school, in terms of serving the community,” said Doug Evans, chairman of the school district’s bilingual department. “I believe you want parents to feel that they have access to the school, that their questions can be answered . . . that they’re not going to hit a number of obstacles because people aren’t going to be able to respond to them or to answer them.”

Located among a mix of apartment buildings and commercial businesses in north-central Waukesha, White Rock appears deceptively small from White Rock Ave. A hill that slopes down from the school hides a lower story that houses the school’s upper grades. The primary grades occupy rooms on the top floor, where the main entrance to the school is.

English is spoken in every classroom. At least half an hour of English as a second language instruction is given daily in the classrooms where Spanish is the dominant language. Other classrooms are either bilingual or those where instruction is given primarily in English.

Transition to English

The school practices what it calls a transitional bilingual program. In it, students who enter the school speaking only Spanish are taught in that language until they reach a proficiency in reading, math and other subjects equivalent to about halfway through second grade. Then teachers start introducing them to more English.

Instructors at the school say they like the approach because it ensures that students get an academic grounding before they get intensive English instruction. If plunged straight into English, as schools in California and Arizona are doing, students risk falling behind in other academic subjects, said fifth-grade bilingual teacher Connie Williams.

“How many people can learn a second language in a year? You tell me,” said Williams, who noted it took her about five years to master Spanish.

Students who enter the school speaking only Spanish are common.

Teacher Irma Nixon counts five students who are recent immigrants among the 19 in her third-grade class. Second-grade teacher Claudia Lopez said she has six immigrants in her Spanish-speaking class, four of whom are recent arrivals.

Principal Gamino has heard criticism that the bilingual school fosters segregation between Hispanic elementary students and the district’s predominantly white population. But he said that with the current setup, he is able to provide more services to the youngsters, both by a large bilingual staff and more state and federal aid. The school qualifies for additional federal funds and the state class-size reduction money because of its large low-income population. Extra state aid is also given for its bilingual program.

“In my mind, I think it’s much better for the kids to learn their academics than being concerned about their social lives or social integration at this point,” Gamino said. “Our purpose is not to see how we are going to be seen on the outside. Our school is to see how things work.”

In addition to academics, the school’s environment can be much more welcoming to students who have recently immigrated, because so many of their peers have been through the same experience, Nixon said.

Parent Maria E. Diaz was one of those students 12 years ago when she entered White Rock’s sixth grade after her arrival from Mexico. Now, her 4-year-old daughter, Jasel, attends preschool there.

“It was a different world,” she said about starting at the American school in 1988. “I was scared — scared because everybody knew what they were doing except for me.”

Gaining confidence

It made a big impact on her when she asked Gamino if she and her sister could perform a traditional Mexican dance for the rest of the students. He agreed, and finally, Diaz said, she was confident in something she was able to do in the school.

A more common experience in American schools is to take the newly immigrated students, often already behind their grade level academically, and place them in English-speaking classes with American-born students where they are expected to catch up.

“That’s the most dominant model in the United States. . . . The one that’s bilingual is: ‘We’ll put you in a program that has a little bit of Spanish, a lot of English and then when we think you’re ready for all-English, put you in the full setting,’ ” said Walter Secada, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who studies educational issues related to Hispanics.

That White Rock is trying something different speaks well for the school and the district, he said. But proof will come only if student achievement shows increases through the years, Secada said.

White Rock’s teachers have high expectations, in part because they have seen the school implement many of the programs they have pushed for, from all-day kindergarten to smaller class sizes.

“I can tell you this is the ideal situation for any teacher,” Olga Pallan said of her all-day, 15-student kindergarten class. “This is what you go to school and train for. . . . This is the way it’s supposed to be.”



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