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Anti-Bilingual Education Initiative Launches Signature Drive at School near SF's Immigrant Chinatown District

July 16, 1997.

San Francisco, CA -- The Northern California leg of the drive to qualify a new voter initiative to end California's current system of "bilingual education" begins 10:00am Thursday morning outside the Jean Parker Elementary School, located at 840 Broadway, near the heart of San Francisco's heavily immigrant Chinatown district. This was the elementary school attended by Kinney Lau, the Chinese immigrant child who served as plaintiff in the unanimous 1974 Supreme Court decision Lau v. Nichols. Lau constitutes the legal basis for all modern "bilingual education" programs.

"We felt that our campaign to end the failed policy of 'bilingual education' should begin at the same site which marked the legal origins of the policy 25 years ago," said Ron K. Unz, the Silicon Valley software entrepreneur who serves as Chairman of the "English for the Children" initiative drive. "We are fully committed to getting our initiative on the June ballot and ending 'bilingual education' in California within 11 months, allowing all children to learn English in California schools."

If approved by voters, the initiative will require that non-English proficient students be moved immediately from the native-language based "bilingual education" system mandated by current state law into an intensive program of "sheltered English immersion." "Bilingual education" would remain an option which parents could specifically request for their children. The measure also allocates $50 million per year for ten years to fund adult English literacy programs.

Mr. Unz, a leading California opponent of Proposition 187, mounted a conservative, pro-immigrant challenge to Gov. Pete Wilson in the 1994 Republican primary, receiving 34% of the vote. The initiative campaign is co-chaired by Gloria Matta Tuchman, a Mexican-American elementary school teacher from Santa Ana. Mrs. Tuchman is a past member of MALDEF and U.S. English, and was named LULAC "Woman of the Year" in 1988.

The statewide qualification campaign will be run by Progressive Campaigns, Inc., California's premier left-liberal initiative organization. In recent years, PCI has successfully qualified Prop. 186 (Single-Payer Health Care), Prop. 210 (Minimum Wage Increase), and Prop. 215 (Medical Marijuana). Prominent Northern California supporters of the initiative include Bok Pon, a leading conservative activist and Northern Vice-Chair of the Republican Party, and Lee Cheng of the Asian-American Legal Foundation.