District Stresses Bilingual Program

Schools Chief Sees More Funding in Fall

Superintendent Veronica C. Garcia sounds optimistic that the Santa Fe Public Schools program for students just learning the English language will be better funded next fall.

District staff are building the 2002-03 budget to incorporate as many of the first-year recommendations made by the district’s bilingual advisory council as possible, she said. The group of teachers, principals, specialists and residents developed a three-year plan.

A full-time coordinator for bilingual education department looks “for sure,” she said. Rick Gutierrez held that position until this school year when he was asked to take on two other programs as well.

“Your job has been very, very hard this year,” Garcia said to him at Tuesday’s board meeting.

Garcia said she doesn’t know yet how much it would cost to put in place all aspects of the first-year plan but they have been prioritized by the budget advisory council.

“I do endorse the plan,” she said at Tuesday’s board meeting. “It is doable, depending on how the money comes in from the Legislature.”

Garcia applauded the council for bringing the bilingual education program into compliance with state standards and developing a model program. Because a child can speak English on a conversational level does not mean he is ready to master academic studies in English, she explained. Full language acquisition can take seven years.

Year one priorities include:

* hiring a full-time bilingual coordinator;

* allocating 70 percent of state money generated by limited English-speaking students to the bilingual office for schools and staff development;

* establishing a part-time testing team to identify more bilingual students;

* conducting forums on bilingual education;

* providing startup costs for schools that desire a dual-language program;

* providing teacher training in bilingual literacy;

* exploring federal grants and recruiting agencies to write them;

* initiating a teacher exchange program with Mexico;

* identifying the schools with the most critical needs.

Students with low English skills generate money from the state for the bilingual education program. Only 50 percent of that $1.4 million flows into the bilingual education office now, with $394,000 sent to the individual schools.

The rest of the money has been dumped into the district’s operating budget to help pay for bilingual teacher salaries.

By the third year of the plan, the goal is to have 90 percent of all bilingual money generated by the students flowing into the bilingual office.

“This plan is also a way of increasing the amount of money that comes in to increase the pie,” said Roberto Mondragon, the former New Mexico lieutenant governor who served on the district’s bilingual advisory council.

Others on the council were Georgia Roybal, co-director with Mondragon of Aspectos Culturales, a company that publishes bilingual education materials, and teacher resource specialist Polly Beckmon.

Associate Superintendent Gloria Rendon said in the past little of the state bilingual funds reached the students who generated it in Santa Fe Public Schools.

“He really has developed a vision for bilingual education,” she said of Gutierrez.

The council wrote a mission statement proclaiming: “Santa Fe Public Schools will offer a variety of proven, effective, research-based bilingual programs (developed collaboratively) with an emphasis on the dual language model.”

The dual-language model, also known as two-way bilingual education and bilingual immersion, often takes place in a classroom mixed with half native speakers of English and half native speakers of another language, such as Spanish. The students receive instruction in both languages.

Besides producing bilingual students, the program can foster cross-cultural understanding.

Currently, Nava and Carlos Gilbert elementary schools are the only public schools in Santa Fe where the dual-language model is practiced.

“Being bilingual to me is one of the greatest assets that a person can have,” board President Robert Ochoa said. “Ninety-nine percent of our culture is our language. If we don’t understand our language, we don’t understand our culture.”

Teresa Madrid, a student adviser to the school board representing Capital High, said she wished she had been more involved in bilingual classes because she has lost fluency in her first language, Spanish.

Christopher Salazar, a student adviser representing Santa Fe High, lamented that today’s students have lost the language their ancestors spoke for hundreds of years in New Mexico.

“We have no idea how to speak Spanish,” he said.

Spanish-speaking students with limited English skills are not the only ones who generate bilingual money. Santa Fe Public Schools has a range of students who speak 20 to 30 other languages from American Indian languages to Asian and European tongues. About 100 Tibetans dwell in Santa Fe, for instance.

Under bilingual education, the district has an obligation to all of these children, Garcia said.



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