Legislators' intentions good, but their timing's still way off

Well, it looks like another hurry-up-and-get-it-done summer has gone by, thanks to Gov. Wilson and our state lawmakers. This marks the third summer in a row of dramatic changes for school districts up and down the state, changes that have hit at the last minute with uncertain funding and with almost zero opportunity to adequately plan or prepare.

Over the past several summers, public educators have been asked to respond to:

Proposition 187, which would have required school administrators to verify students’ immigrant status; since overturned in court.

Class-size reduction in grades K-3.

Proposition 227, greatly restricting instruction in a child’s primary language.

New mandatory standardized testing program (Stanford 9).

Class-size reduction in ninth grade.

Longer school year.

Most of the time we have been asked to plan for these changes even while the state budget is delayed by several months. Not only does this often waste valuable staff time, it leads to crisis management and a gambler’s approach to funding new programs and jobs.

This summer, for example, it looked like new legislation would offer school districts money to lower class sizes in ninth grade math and reading classes. Our reading classes already are lower, so I decided to hire five new math teachers and I directed principals to make last-minute adjustments to their master calendars and to find space on crowded campuses for extra classes.

Days after doing this, the governor announced he would start the funding for these lower class sizes in January, rather than September. Now, because I can’t ask these valuable math teachers to wait six months to start their jobs, I must find a way to pay for their salaries out of our own limited budget.

Like most of the recent legislation, the lower ninth-grade classes makes sense, and I applaud the governor’s intentions. I certainly want to implement new programs that make parents happy, are good for children and improve our district. But, whatever happened to giving districts adequate planning and preparation time?

If I had chosen to wait for the legislation to be passed and not hired the math teachers this summer, they would have been snatched up by other districts in a flash. I had to choose between quality teachers and certain funding. I chose quality teachers and got left holding the bill.

Over the past three summers, we have been scrambling to hire teachers, buy and install portables and acquire classroom materials to lower class sizes in K-3. We have been scrambling to implement the new Stanford 9 test. We have been scrambling to find a way to increase student time in class and still stay within our salary budget. And, while we have been scrambling, we have been overseeing $81 million in local bond money, building a new school, planning future schools and making major repairs throughout the district.

But nothing in my memory has been so tough as the two-month time period we had this summer to implement Proposition 227, the bilingual education measure that requires teachers to teach students “overwhelmingly” in English.

Immediately after the June 3 election, our attorney began working out a definition that strikes a balance between the new state law and existing federal law, which says every child must have equal access to curriculum.

Led by Jennifer Robles, Ventura Unified School District bilingual program specialist, the staff met in June and July to form guidelines for teaching English-language learners in a new way. We created a task force in July, gathered specific questions from teachers and parents, ordered classroom materials, and in just 60 days, dramatically modified our programs and procedures in time for the opening of year-round school on Aug. 3.

Basically, the program places limited-English kids in a mandatory, sheltered English program for 30 days during which they are taught in English with minimal primary language assistance. After 30 days, the new law says that parents have the right to keep their children in the sheltered English class, move them to a traditional bilingual class or move them to a class where no extra assistance for acquiring English is available.

So far, thanks to some amazingly devoted and highly trained teachers who love their students, our three-tiered program is working, and children are surviving this rushed legislation. Yet, it seems more than a little ironic that at one of our year-round schools, 90 percent of parents have opted to sign waivers to place their children back into a traditional bilingual class after the mandatory 30 days.

Why are they doing this? The biggest reason, parents tell us, is that they want to help their children with homework and to be a part of their children’s educational experience. They cannot do so when the homework and classwork is in English only. They are frustrated with being cut out of the process, just as any of us would be if homework started coming home in Japanese or Gaelic.

These parents, all of whom strongly desire that their children learn English, also are convinced that our traditional bilingual program was working. Prior to Proposition 227, VUSD children were learning English while keeping up with academics taught in Spanish. They were almost always ready to transfer to English-only instruction by third grade.

I make the point about Proposition 227 not to condemn it as a bad law, but rather to expose the unrealistic time period that was written into the proposition by an author with little to no understanding of school district management. Sixty days is simply not enough time to blow up and rebuild a critical part of the educational system, particularly one where so many children and parents are affected.

But this type of thinking now seems to be the status quo; in an era of “just get it done,” we will very likely continue to scramble and gamble.

And so, I must ask the community’s patience during the inevitable glitches that will arise from all the rush and uncertainty. It’s been another tough summer. I can assure you that a little understanding this autumn will go a long way with anyone and everyone who works in education.

— Joe Spirito is superintendent of the Ventura Unified School District. You can e-mail him at [email protected]



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