Bilingual shortage targeted

Plan would limit bonus to early-grade teachers

Dallas school district officials asked nicely last year that bilingual teachers move from upper elementary grades to the lowest levels.

Now, because too few teachers made the switch, officials say they’re going to have to get tough. The need, they say, is getting critical.

On Wednesday, district administrators will propose taking away the $ 3,000 annual stipend for bilingual instructors who are not teaching in grades pre-kindergarten through third. Currently, bilingual teachers in all elementary grades receive the bonus.

“Those teachers in grades fourth to sixth have a choice,” said Ruben Olivarez , the district’s associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction. “They can stay where they are . . . they will not get a stipend. It’s not only that we know it’s educationally sound, it’s the law.”

State law requires districts with teacher shortages to fill vacancies in the lower grades first. The district’s proposal is aimed at combating an overall shortage of bilingual teachers while ensuring that children who need to learn English do so as early as possible, district administrators say.

When the school year began, the district needed 618 bilingual teachers. Through April, 4,000 more students enrolled who speak limited English, and the shortage grew. Currently, there are openings for 744 bilingual teachers in all elementary grades. It would take 467 of them to meet the district’s needs in pre-kindergarten to third. There are no bilingual classes in secondary schools.

Even if the proposal passes, it would not solve the shortage in the lower grades, said Evangelina Carmona-Cortez, the assistant superintendent who heads the district’s multilingual department.

There are 158 bilingual teachers in the upper grades. Moving them to lower grades would leave about 300 openings in the first four grades.

“If the district had started it 10 years ago, we’d have continuity. Now, the problem is so big,” Ms. Cortez said.

Opposition to plan

Several bilingual teachers said they oppose the plan, partly because they wonder how older students who are in bilingual classes will fare in English-only classes. They also said many teachers prefer working with older students.

“It’s like punishing a teacher because she’s bilingual,” said Janie Vega , a bilingual kindergarten teacher at W.M. Anderson Elementary School in Pleasant Grove.

District officials said they’re trying to improve a bilingual education program that has been inconsistent for too long. Some schools have bilingual teachers in every grade, others have only one or two, and some have none.

“It is an issue of equal educational opportunity,” Dr. Olivarez told principals at a recent district meeting. “It’s not an issue of comfort in the workplace.”

In Fort Worth, bilingual teachers have already made the move to lower grades.

The Fort Worth school district eliminated bilingual education in its upper grades in elementary schools at the start of this school year. Bilingual teachers had to change grades or teach English as a Second Language classes to the older students.

“There was fear. There was apprehension like, “What is going to happen to me?’ Once that was worked out, we’ve done quite well this year,” said Larry Shaw , executive director of the United Educators Association, a Fort Worth teachers group.

“When you get right down to it, it turned out to be good for the kids,” Mr. Shaw said. “The quicker you can get them immersed in English, the better off they are.”

But Dallas competes with suburbs for bilingual teachers, noted Alfred Carrizales , chairman of the Dallas school district’s Latino Advisory Committee.

“They need to be very delicate in handling this situation,” Mr. Carrizales said. “We have a vast shortage as it is of bilingual teachers. We can ill afford to lose more with strong-arm tactics.”

Plano, for example, has 11 openings for the upcoming school year for classes up to fifth grade, personnel director Diane Miles said.

Not all teachers are at ease with the youngest children, said Maureen Peters , vice president of the Alliance of Dallas Educators.

“Their personalities are such [that] they’re not the kind . . . that enjoys tying children’s shoes and blowing their noses,” she said.

Students’ needs

The state encourages schools to focus on the young students first, said Maria Seidner , the Texas Education Agency’s director of bilingual education.

“We say use your teachers with the youngest kids because those are the ones who don’t speak as much and they need all the help they can get,” Ms. Seidner said.

But the TEA would not approve of districts ignoring the needs of older students, and the move Dallas is taking would raise “all sorts of flags,” she said. “You are saying the kids in fourth or fifth grade don’t have the same rights as the other kids.”

According to the Texas Education Code, school districts with 20 limited English speaking students in the same grade level must provide bilingual education at every grade in elementary school. If they have a teacher shortage, districts are supposed to first put available bilingual teachers in pre-kindergarten, then kindergarten and so on. But they have to create a plan to hire bilingual teachers for upper elementary grades, Ms. Seidner said.

Teacher shortage

Dallas’ plan addresses the early grades first, then deals with the next levels, Ms. Cortez said. She said she has been powerless to require schools to follow state rules and fill the vacancies.

School board trustee Kathleen Leos said the hiring of teachers should be linked to evaluations.

“There are no more excuses,” Ms. Leos said.

Principals and their supervisors said the school board did not make it mandatory to move bilingual teachers. They said they have been trying to recruit more in the wake of a state and national shortage of bilingual teachers.

But Angie Trevino, principal of Travis Elementary School in the Uptown area, said she supports the plan even though she didn’t like it when she had to leave a reading position for a bilingual class 16 years ago.

The school district’s performance on the Spanish version of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills has been dismal. Last year, for example, 35 percent of students passed the Spanish math and reading tests; 13 percent passed the fourth-grade tests.

“This haphazard approach at bilingual education is not working. Our test scores show it,” Ms. Trevino said. “It’s like a neon light flashing in our faces.”



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