Staff Cuts Endanger Grant Funds

School ponders fate of bilingual programs

A bilingual program in a school that its administrators say has reached deeply and effectively into the Hispanic community may disappear if its staffers are among 155 the Board of Education cuts.

The program at Herman Badillo School 76 is funded by two state grants, totaling $ 250,000.

For five years, it has provided before- and after-school care for children of working parents, after-school tutoring for 200 children and after-school extracurricular activities for any of the 500 children who choose to stay.

One grant funded literacy training for parents while their children are in school.

Nylsa Pinero, parent volunteer who became coordinator in 1988, ran more than 20 after-school programs for children.

“We had computer club, chorus, school band, Latin band,” said Mrs. Pinero.

Mrs. Pinero, who was paid $ 22,410 for 45-hour weeks, has been notified that because she lacks seniority, her job will end Sept. 3.

She and the two literacy coordinators will be replaced by other community education leaders with no seniority who do not speak Spanish.

“The jobs require bilingual people,” said Mrs. Pinero.

She questioned how community education leaders who do not speak Spanish will communicate with parents who do not speak or write English.

The threat to the programs results from the board’s cutting eight of 19 community education leaders, along with 147 other jobs.

Union contracts will eliminate the eight with lowest seniority. The three bilingual coordinators within the school will be replaced by workers who are not bilingual. That, in turn, does not meet the requirement of the community schools grant, the source of the $ 200,000, so the school may lose the grant.

The dilemma surfaced publicly Wednesday after 30 parents found out they could not protest those and other cuts at Badillo before the Board of Education. They did not know about the Tuesday noon deadline for signing up to speak.

“It is a sad day when you can take an entire community and completely shut them out of the process,” said Ralph Hernandez, part of the crowd that left in an orderly fashion but remained dissatisfied.

Inside the board room, School Superintendent Albert Thompson told the board members that, as a result of last month’s cuts, the school at 300 South Elmwood Ave. will lose several jobs. They include assistant principal, a person who usually enforces discipline.

Thompson said Badillo also has lost a program coordinator, an educator who works closely with teachers, because a grant ended.



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