Leaders of the effort to scrap bilingual education in Colorado are in a furious race to get enough signatures to make the November ballot.

“We’re scrambling . . . and I mean scrambling,” said former Denver School Board member Rita Montero.

The group has collected more than 30,000 signatures so far, California businessman Ron Unz, another backer, announced Friday. But 80,751 signatures are required by Aug. 5.

Montero and Unz said their effort was handcuffed by opponents who kept them tied up in court until late June, when the Colorado Supreme Court rejected challenges to the initiative’s language.

Unz said the “frivolous lawsuits” left his group with fewer than six weeks instead of the usual six months to garner names.

The millionaire California businessman, who convinced voters in his state in 1998 to dump bilingual programs, said Latino children in California have performed better academically since then.

“In less than three years of test scores after the initiative, the test scores of over a million Latino students have gone up by almost a factor of two in some cases,” he said.

Several backers carrying signs in Spanish and English, “Ingles Para Los Ninos” and “English for the Children,” stood on the steps of the Capitol beside Unz and Montero Friday.

Gully Stanford, a State Board of Education member who is leading the fight against the ballot measure, was out of the country and unavailable for comment.

But Denver businessman Paul Sandoval, a former school board member, ex-legislator and opponent of the proposal, said he hoped Coloradans would view it closely before supporting it.

“Learning English is a high priority with everyone, but they’re shutting down all other operations (but their own),” said Sandoval. “It’s an ill-thought-out program that goes against the grain of what people really want kids to do.”



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