Revamping bilingual education programs in city schools would cost the city $75 million under a sweeping plan announced yesterday by Schools Chancellor Harold Levy.

Levy’s proposal would increase the current $169 million budget for bilingual and English-as-a-second-language programs by a whopping 44%, adding at least 4,600 new teachers to the payroll over the next five years.

“This is not cheap, but if we are going to do a first-class program, we’re going to have to pay first-class prices,” Levy told a Board of Education committee yesterday as he unveiled the 41-page report.

Levy would end automatic placement of non-English-speaking students in bilingual or ESL classes, a key complaint of parents.

Parents would be given a two-hour orientation spelling out their right to choose among bilingual or ESL classes and a new, third option providing more intensive ESL classes.

While most of Levy’s plan overlaps with recommendations made on Monday by Mayor Giuliani’s bilingual education task force, the hefty price tag for Levy’s plan would appear to contradict Giuliani’s longstanding goal of paring down the bilingual education bureaucracy.

Levy, who was also on the City Hall task force, wants to hire at least 3,400 bilingual teachers and 1,240 ESL teachers over five years. To help alleviate the Board of Education’s longstanding difficulty in attracting bilingual teachers, Levy would create a recruitment center that would also help teachers get state certification. About 27% of bilingual teachers and 14% of ESL teachers are uncertified.

City Hall officials said they would reserve judgment on Levy’s plan ? and the proposed price tag ? until they have had a chance to review his recommendations and the budget.

“In theory, if students exit bilingual education in three years, then over time, we will have fewer students in bilingual because more students will be learning English quicker,” said Deputy Mayor Anthony Coles, Giuliani’s education adviser.

Irving Hamer, chairman of the Board of Ed’s bilingual education committee, called the proposed budget increase “huge,” and said his committee would make its own recommendations to the board in time for a Feb. 7 vote.

There are 177,000 students in bilingual classes, which are taught in a student’s native language, and ESL classes, which are taught primarily in English.

Levy’s third option, which mirrors an English-intensive option suggested by the task force, would create 10 pilot programs ? at a cost of $800,000 ? during the 2001-02 school year where students will receive extra doses of ESL instruction.

Moves to overhaul bilingual education gained momentum after a Board of Education study in September showed that only 50% of students leave bilingual and ESL programs in the state-mandated three years, and that many languish in the programs for up to nine years.



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