Group Helps Oakland Dad Fight Son's Bilingual Class

Kindergartner taught partly in Chinese

A 5-year-old African American boy who was put in a Chinese- speaking kindergarten class in Oakland has landed in the middle of California’s fight over bilingual education. The boy’s father wants the youngster, who speaks only English, to be in a class at his neighborhood school in which instruction is given only in English. The principal says that is not possible.

“This state has eliminated affirmative action, so my son is going to have to be at the top of his education to go places in life,” said the father, George Louie. “A native American kid should be taught in English.”

The Pacific Legal Foundation of Sacramento agreed this week to represent Louie’s son, Travell, a kindergartner at Lincoln Elementary School in Oakland’s Chinatown. The foundation has led a number of key court challenges to affirmative action and bilingual education across the state. Most recently, it filed the Orange County case that prompted the state Board of Education to rule last month that California school districts could teach children solely in English.

The Oakland saga began last fall when Louie stumbled on the information that his son was in a bilingual kindergarten class in which the teacher regularly spoke Cantonese.

“No one notified me,” Louie said. “I happened to get to school early one day to pick up Travell and saw him and three other kids who weren’t Chinese sitting off by themselves in the back of the classroom. They were ignored while the teacher talked to the rest of the class in Cantonese for 45 minutes.”

Louie demanded his son be placed in a classroom in which only English was spoken. But all four kindergarten classes at Lincoln, which is more than 90 percent Asian American, are bilingual, according to principal Wendy Lee.

“I truly feel I tried to accommodate him,” Lee said. “I can’t offer a class I don’t have.”

Instead, the school district offered to transfer Travell to another school — but Louie doesn’t believe he should have to leave his neighborhood school to find an English classroom.

“I have a prosthetic leg, and it’s difficult enough getting around,” said Louie, who lost his right leg below the knee to gangrene caused by his diabetes. Travell’s mother died when he was a toddler, and Louie is a single father without a car who lives near Lake Merritt in the Lincoln attendance area.

“I walk Travell to and from school every day, and telling me the only answer is to transfer to another school farther away is a hardship,” said Louie, who lives on disability and other assistance. Oakland schools do not provide bus transportation.

“I believe they are trying to bring the non-English speakers up to proficiency at my son’s expense,” Louie said.

Louie, who said he cannot afford a lawyer, represented himself and filed a lawsuit against the school district in federal court in Oakland in October. The case, which alleged that Travell’s right to an equal education was being denied, was dismissed on technicalities. The Pacific Legal Foundation plans to go back to court on his behalf.

Louie also flew to San Diego earlier this year to testify about his son’s situation before a congressional committee. His trip was financed by an anti-bilingual education group.

“I’m a registered Democrat,” said Louie, dismissing talk that he is a plant being used by anti-bilingual forces to advance a conservative cause. “I went to the usual liberal groups for help, and they turned me down. On something like this, you need a lawyer, and the Pacific Legal Foundation offered to help.”

Sharon Browne, an attorney for the foundation, said Pacific Legal accepts only cases that it believes will be of state and national significance.

“We are involved because bilingual education is failing the state’s students,” Browne said. “Children are not able to get a job unless they are fluent in English.”

The foundation is not taking a position on Proposition 227, the June ballot initiative that would eliminate instruction in languages other than English in California. But Travell’s case is sure to be used by its proponents as an example of what is wrong with bilingual education. In January, Travell was transferred to a classroom at Lincoln in which the teacher gives instruction primarily in English. Louie is not satisfied, because that teacher speaks some Cantonese and the class has a Cantonese-speaking instructional assistant available for students who don’t speak English.

“I don’t want his brain being clogged with Cantonese at the time he is supposed to be increasing his vocabulary and learning in English. Why shouldn’t my son have an instructional assistant who speaks his own language?” said Louie, echoing the sentiments of some other African American parents in Oakland who have questioned why bilingual students get extra support that is often not available to their children.

Oakland gets about $4 million a year in federal money directed through the state for the 17,600 children classified as limited English speakers, about a third of the students in the district. Most of the money is spent on hiring instructional aides. In addition, Oakland’s bilingual teachers get about $2,060 a year in extra pay.

Louie questions whether all the children in Oakland’s bilingual classes need to be there. “I think they are manipulating the process to get more money,” he said.

He said Lincoln has enough English-speaking students to offer an English-only kindergarten.

Principal Lee said she surveyed the other parents of non-Chinese kindergartners after Louie first raised his concerns, but they did not want to have their children transferred to a new class a month or more into the school year.

“Some parents see learning Chinese as an advantage,” Lee said.



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