Principal Who Lacks Fluency in Spanish is Transferred

Education: Helen Friedman has been replaced at predominantly Spanish-speaking Fries Avenue Elementary in Wilmington. Some parents had complained about communication difficulties.

Ousted school principal Helen Friedman does not speak fluent Spanish, and that’s a big reason why the veteran administrator is being sent to another school.

Two weeks ago, the former head of Fries Avenue Elementary School in Wilmington received a phone call from a Los Angeles Unified School District administrator who told her to pack her things and prepare for a transfer.

The problem, Assistant Supt. Maria Casillas said, was that Friedman could not communicate in Spanish at a school where more than half of the students are native Spanish-speakers.

To be sure, the language barrier wasn’t the only concern. Parents had been complaining for more than a year that they felt excluded from decision-making at the school and that the children lacked discipline and inspiration. And many teachers said they suffered from flagging morale.

But while Casillas praised Friedman for having brought several corporations into partnerships with the school, she said the communication breakdown between the principal and many Spanish-speaking parents ultimately prompted her ouster.

“If she had been an incompetent principal, I would have gone for a demotion,” said Casillas, who heads the district’s Elementary Region A, which includes Wilmington, Carson and Gardena, among other parts of the South Bay. “But over the years, our communities have changed and our needs have changed, and our staff sometimes have not kept up.

“It was a matter of, ‘Was our principal able to coalesce all segments of our community to work with her?’ ” she added.

Friedman’s case shows just how serious educators have become about involving parents in education. It also illustrates how bilingualism has become an important force in multicultural Los Angeles, where 31% of public schoolchildren have a limited ability to speak English.

Bilingual educator Nancy Orozco, who is Anglo, replaced Friedman, who is also Anglo, on July 1. Orozco previously served as principal of Stanford Avenue School in South Gate.

“Whatever went on in the past, I would hope people would be able to put aside and focus on what would be best for students,” Orozco said.

Friedman, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has not received her new assignment. But as a district employee, she will continue to draw an $81,000-a-year salary. Because the transfer was not made for disciplinary reasons, Friedman has no recourse to challenge it under district policy.

In a farewell letter to parents, however, Friedman described the transfer as having come at her own request. The letter, written in English and translated into Spanish, described 15 programs and activities that were implemented during her tenure, including the development of a reading program, a sixth-grade camping trip and a career day.

But parents say it isn’t what she did, so much as what she didn’t do, that aroused complaints.

In a school whose student body is nearly 90% Latino, many Spanish-speaking parents were dismayed that they needed a translator to communicate with the principal, said Parent Teacher Assn. President Sofia Carrillo.

Those who felt their children were uninspired, unmotivated and undisciplined had no way of discussing their concerns with the principal, she said.

“They felt excluded, unable to involve themselves in their children’s education,” Carrillo said.

And there were other problems.

Although about 60% of the school’s 1,200 students speak mainly Spanish, only 36% of its teachers are proficient in the language. The shortage of Spanish-speaking teachers has meant that many classrooms must employ a bilingual aide to translate assignments for children still struggling to learn English.

And while Mexican-Americans for decades have been the backbone of the Wilmington community surrounding the school, newer immigrants began moving into the area in recent years, school officials say.

The change has vastly increased the number of parents and children whose primary language is Spanish and has made bilingualism essential for school administrators, says former Fries principal Amelia McKenna, who is now elementary administrator for the region.

“It’s important because the only way we will be successful in meeting the achievement needs of our children is by being able to involve their parents in their education,” McKenna said. “The schools cannot do it alone. The parent is possibly the first and best teacher the child has.”

Nevertheless, it took district administrators more than a year to decide on the transfer.

Casillas said she inherited a thick file on Fries and its principal when she became district administrator last year. Among its contents was a petition in Spanish that listed 19 demands to improve discipline and academic performance at the school.

But Casillas said she was wary about responding too quickly to the complaints. She wanted to see the problems for herself.

During the school year, she spoke to Friedman several times and even scheduled meetings with parents to hear their concerns.

That was when she discovered how divided the school’s parents had become. The tensions were reflected even in the seating arrangements: Spanish-speaking parents sat on one side of the room, English-speaking parents sat on the other.

“It was embarrassing,” Casillas recalls. “I told Helen, ‘You’ve got to bring people together, because if you don’t it’s going to look like you’re responding only to one set of parents.’ “

By the end of the school year, Casillas had decided it was time for a change.

“The English-speaking parents always had access to her,” Casillas said. “They never complained. But the Spanish-speaking parents did not have access to the principal unless they went through a third person. Those parents feel like they are second-class.

“Helen did not commit a mortal sin,” Casillas added. “Helen was a very good principal and will continue to be. . . . (But) we’re beginning to see some real activist parents out there, and the more we try to resist it, the more revolutionary and hostile they become.”

Not everyone, however, was happy about Friedman’s departure. At least two parents said they and their children cried when they learned she would be leaving.

One mother, JoAnn Joseph, said she thought it was unfair that Friedman “could spend four years and do such a good job and get transferred so quickly.”

Joseph, who has a daughter and a son at the school, said she believes the complaints against Friedman reflect prejudice against people who don’t speak Spanish — a charge Carrillo and other Friedman critics deny.

“Helen speaks some Spanish, and I think she was taking lessons to improve it. But I guess that wasn’t good enough,” Joseph said.

Parent activist Carol Chapman was more blunt.

The mother of two Fries students said she was “very emotionally upset” about Friedman’s transfer and bitterly dismissed the complaints by Carrillo.

“I don’t know how she’s got that much pull,” Chapman said. “I don’t see why in the hell (Carrillo) don’t learn English. She’s lived here long enough.”

Friedman supporter Ramona Duran, an Anglo parent whose husband is of Mexican-American descent, summed it up this way: “A lot of the English-speaking people feel if we moved to Mexico, no one would be catering to our children, teaching them in English. . . . The Spanish ones want more for their kids, and we already think their kids are getting too much already.”

Such sentiments are distressing to Arturo Vargas of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “People who would not ordinarily consider themselves bigots find themselves saying things. . . . It underscores how much we need to do in human relations in our community.”

District administrators also bristle at suggestions that there was anything discriminatory about transferring a Spanish-speaking principal to the school. The decision, they say, was based purely on what was good for the community and its children.

“In advocating for kids first, along the way I’m going to be attacked by people who are going to be ruffled,” Casillas said. “If I thought it was a racial thing, I would have sent them a real Mexican with a sombrero to be principal there.”



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