A proposed reorganization of the State Education Department, designed to reduce the size of bureaucracy, would reduce the number of assistant commissioners and eliminate the state division of bilingual education.

But advocates for bilingual education are questioning the wisdom of eliminating the division and have written to State Education Commissioner Thomas Sobol to state their opposition.

A spokesman for Sobol said that he will present an outline of the plan at a meeting of the Board of Regents on Friday.

Chris Carpenter, a spokesman for Sobol, said that the move would eliminate several layers of bureaucracy. “Services will be strengthened,” Carpenter said. “Administrators will be dealing more directly in the schools.”

Critics of Sobol’s plan have already written to him, saying that bilingual education needs a central coordinator and responsibilities for programs should not be relegated to proposed “regional teams.” They said the discipline requires familiarity with federal regulations and grants, and monitoring of bilingual programs should be coordinated through one office.

“It is the combination of expertise present in the Division of Bilingual Education which makes it so effective,” James J. Lyons, executive director of the National Association for Bilingual Education, said in a letter to Sobol noting his opposition.

“Were the staff to be divided up and scattered across the state, no one Field Service Team could possibly have the same expertise as does the division . . . as a whole,” he said.

Eliminating the division of bilingual education “will add to the sadness and tragedy of the Hispanic immigrants’ children in this country,” said Gil Bernardino, executive director of Circulo De La Hispanidad, a Long Beach Hispanic organization.

Details of the plan were not available. But Carpenter said that under a current draft, the positions of nine assistant commissioners of education would be eliminated, as well as the positions of about 55 bureau chiefs and division directors. Bilingual education would be among other divisions, such as health and fitness, science, art and music, that would be eliminated.



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