Bilingual-education rivals prepare to fight new round

Proponents of choice in bilingual education have organized under the moniker English + to fight a ballot initiative that would mandate English immersion for children who speak a different language.

The proposed initiative they oppose calls for a constitutional amendment requiring districts to put English learners in transitional classes “not normally intended to exceed one year” before they are mainstreamed into English-only classrooms. Initiative supporters are hoping to get it on the November 2002 ballot.

“My issue is that an initiative like this which is conceived as a one-size-fits-all straitjacket does not address the needs of Colorado’s English learners,” said English + campaign co-chair Gully Stanford. “As a member of the state board of education, I support locally controlled English language acquisition programs.”

Ron Unz, a California multimillionaire who finances campaigns to kill bilingual education, would deny 178 school districts the right to create their own programs, Stanford said. Unz has been successful in California and Arizona; Colorado and Massachusetts are his next targets.

English + will be driven by the same people who led the effort to kill a similar initiative last year: Stanford, former Colorado Education Association president Beverly Ausfahl, attorney Rufina Hernandez, who directs the Latin American Research and Service Agency (LARASA), Colorado Association for Bilingual Education president Silvana Carlos, activist/teacher Ramon Del Castillo, and attorney/school principal Lorenzo Trujillo.

Ready again to face her adversaries, former Denver school board member Rita Montero accused them of being more one-size-fits-all than she is. English + proponents’ sole agenda is native language instruction, she said.

Further, Montero said her initiative does not rob districts of choice, but offers parents options.

Ron Unz makes those options sound hard to get. In an interview from Los Angeles, Unz said “some students can apply for a waiver to stay in a bilingual program, but only under special circumstances – if there is clear evidence that a child would benefit.”

Unz also said his initiative might well hurt the popular dual-language immersion schools popping up around the state, schools in which an equal number of native English speakers and Spanish speakers start out together and emerge bilingual by the fifth grade.

“That’s only a theory” that they emerge bilingual, Unz said.

Besides, he added, “we’re talking such an insignificant number” of kids in dual-language schools, “I hardly think it’s an issue one way or another.”

LARASA’s Hernandez said Montero’s complaints about bilingual education stem from a personal conflict with Denver Public Schools over Montero’s son.

Ironically, Denver might be the one district in the state to be exempted from such a mandate because it is under a federal court order, Hernandez said, “but they’re going to hamstring every other school district.”

That’s not necessarily so, countered Montero. U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch has a choice to continue the federal monitoring if Denver still isn’t in compliance, or to lift the court order.

Montero also said that if Denver isn’t in compliance with court-ordered monitoring, “you can imagine what kind of violations are going on in smaller districts that don’t have federal oversight.”



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