Officials split on bilingual decision

Independence: Area educators respect decision, but don't want to be forced to follow suit.

A day after the Santa Barbara school board decided to scrap its bilingual education program, several Ventura County educators said they can respect the move — as long as the same decision isn’t forced on them.

But that could happen if voters approve a statewide initiative on the June primary ballot. It would essentially dismantle bilingual education and replace it with one year of intensive English training for students who haven’t mastered the language.

Key education officials in Ventura County said they think bilingual education is needed in many local classrooms. But they support the right of school districts to design their own curriculum.

“The state of California is too large to have a one-size-fits-all” educational system, said Charles Weis, Ventura County superintendent of schools.

Statewide, 24 percent of public school students are not fluent in English. One in five Ventura County children have limited English skills.

The Santa Barbara Unified School District voted unanimously late Wednesday night to roll back a 25-year-old bilingual program. Instead of teaching students in their native language, students will be taught primarily in English and will take English as a second language courses, according to school officials. There still will be Spanish-speaking teachers and aides in the classrooms, according to school officials.

Joseph Spirito, superintendent of the Ventura Unified School District, said he would not want to do the same thing in Ventura, but he supported local control over education.

“I don’t think anybody should interfere with that right to decide,” Spirito said.

Spirito said Ventura Unified’s trustees likely will follow the Oxnard School District in taking a stand against the “English for the Children” initiative. The initiative, authored by Republican millionaire Ron Unz, would virtually dismantle bilingual education in California.

Initiative supporter Steve Frank, a Simi Valley political activist, said the Santa Barbara board’s decision was a sign that education officials statewide are backing away from bilingual education.

“When one of the most liberal cities in California E recognizes the failure of segregating students by language through bilingual education, as a conservative and as a parent, I realize we are on the right track,” Frank said.

Santa Barbara joins an Orange County School District in asking the state for a waiver to the policy mandating bilingual education.

“What we see here is a trend of not even waiting for English for Children to pass,” Frank said.

Some education officials, however, are hesitant to say there’s a statewide trend in the making.

Santa Barbara schools spokeswoman Barbara Keyani said school officials there were not trying to pave the way for the state initiative.

“We’ve been thinking about what would work for us and for our children and our test scores,” Keyani said.

Weis said he has not seen a statewide trend of schools backing away from bilingual education.

Silvina Rubinstein, executive director of the California Association for Bilingual Education, said few districts are following Santa Barbara.

“School districts like Santa Barbara are in the minority,” Rubinstein said.

Rubinstein said Santa Barbara trustees didn’t pay attention to parents who clamored to keep bilingual education.

“It was a very stubborn kind of discussion that chose not to listen to what the parents had to say,” Rubinstein said.

Francisco Dominguez, a trustee with the Oxnard School District, where half the students have limited English skills, said he was concerned about putting students into English immersion classes where they would be expected to get a command of the language in a hurry before heading into English-only classes.

He did, however, support the right of local school districts with relatively few students without a command of English to decline bilingual education programs.



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