Toni Oklan-Arko pays close attention to what’s going on in the world, from politics to economics to natural disasters. She knows that whenever there’s a global blip, it will impact the West Contra Costa school district.

Earthquake in Nicaragua? Ethnic cleansing in Croatia? This is where the refugees come in search of a new beginning.

Eighty-two languages. That’s how many she juggles in this United Nations of a school district. Eighty-two, with names that roll mysteriously off the tongue: Gujarati. Ilocano. Urdu. Chaozhou.

Non-English advocate

This is where all the ethnic diversity we’ve been hearing about comes home to roost. People come to this country not just to better themselves, but also the lives of their children, and step one is enrolling them in school.

Thank God they have Oklan-Arko.

As director of bilingual/English language development services, she’s a zealot, a tiger, an advocate with attitude. She adores and admires these kids, many of whom have been through hell. So many Americans are wary of non-English speakers, but she sees them as a treasure, a way to bust out of our cultural smugness and embrace a global perspective.

Their numbers are dipping elsewhere in the Bay Area, including San Francisco and Marin, where immigrants are being priced out by gentrification. But in the West Contra Costa Unified School District, they’re up, with 27 percent of the 34,000 students designated “English learners.” (That means those whose native tongue is other than English and who don’t understand, speak, read or write our language.)

She’s got kids who speak tribal languages such as Hmong and Khmu, which have no written form. She’s got the offspring of Vietnam refugees who fled the murderous Viet Cong. She’s got classrooms where every single student is an English learner.

The bulk of them speak Spanish 6,448 as of last count but she’s also got 298 Pilipino speakers, 96 Arabic, 89 Hindi.

A guide for transition

Their stories are both exhilarating and heartbreaking. These newcomers face obstacles most of us can’t even fathom, negotiating the hairpin turns of a foreign culture, sometimes with the entire family crammed into a garage without plumbing. The undocumented live in constant fear of deportation.

Oklan-Arko mother hens them all, bringing in discarded housewares and clothes. She even had to educate Laotian women about having their little girls wear underpants, an effort she called “The Mien Underwear Fund.”

Let her, and she’ll go on forever about these kids. She rails against Proposition 227, which replaced bilingual instruction with English immersion. These are not sponges, she says: “We’re talking about the human brain!

“To suggest they can acquire academic English in not to exceed one year’ is ludicrous.”

She hands me “Quietly Torn,” an exquisite literary journal compiled by young Iu Mien women living in Richmond. Their stories and poems recount the rocky transition to American life from homelands in North Vietnam, Thailand and Laos.

“Like a cat that was wounded by a car, my mother cries in the middle of the night,” writes a young girl. “The next day, I watch as her face turns green and blue from the bruises that she received from her husband. I listen as my parents fight over the family income.”

I leave Oklan-Arko’s office and, as if on cue, a woman in native dress runs past, chasing a toddler with another baby strapped to her back.

Her journey has just begun.

Karen Hershenson writes about life in the East Bay. Call her at 925-943-8252, or e-mail [email protected].



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