Melting Pot : L.B. Schools Work to Assimilate Pupils of Many Tongues

There are times when the line at 7th Street and Daisy Avenue stretches clear out to the parking lot.

Arriving early by car or bus, parents steer their fidgety broods tentatively toward the three bungalows nestled on a corner of the elementary school campus there. Some of the families seem fearful; others just dazed.

For some of these immigrants, it is their first glimpse of an American school system. Once inside, they form a great dignified mass of humanity, quietly conversing in a dissonance of languages.

It’s been called the Ellis Island of Long Beach. And indeed, the Assignment Center of the Long Beach Unified School District provides many newcomers with their initial impressions of a city seeking to make them its own.

An estimated 3,000 children accompanied by untold numbers of parents, relatives and neighbors passed through this unusual center at Edison Elementary School last year, according to Martha Estrada, program administrator.

Assigned to Suitable Programs

They came from a variety of backgrounds and for a host of reasons. Many were new to the country; some spoke limited or no English. Fresh from their native lands or other districts, the youngsters were greeted and enrolled in their own languages, tested for English proficiency, administered necessary immunizations and medical tests, and assigned to a school or learning program considered suitable to their needs.

The process takes anywhere from a few hours to a few days, but staffers say that most participants consider the time well spent.

“Where else could we go for help?” said Consuelo Ramirez, 30, who on a recent morning accompanied her mother and 10-year-old brother to the center to have the boy enrolled in school. Natives of Mexico, none in the family speaks English.

“Without the center we would never have been able to get an education for our child,” Ramirez said through an interpreter.

The program started in 1981 after the district began noticing increasing numbers of non-English-speaking children entering its schools, particularly economic immigrants from south of the border and political refugees from Southeast Asia. That year, according to Lewis Prilliman, director of research, 11.6% of the district’s students spoke limited or no English.

Since then the ratio has risen almost 2% each year, Prilliman said, reaching a high last spring of 18.7%, or 11,524 of the district’s 61,750 students. Although total enrollment this year is nearly 64,000, he said, new figures on the number of non-English-speaking students will not be available until next month.

Enrollment Will Climb

Prilliman predicted, however, that non- or limited-English-speaking enrollment will continue to climb for at least the next 10 to 15 years, reaching close to 12,000 by 1987.

County education officials consider it a model for this type of program, and they say it is the only one of its scale operating in the county.

“The biggest problem has been finding (staff) who speak those languages and developing curriculum to teach” the children, the researcher said.

Much of the initial communication problem has now been solved by the Assignment Center, whose 31 full-time and 35 part-time staffers speak a total of 49 languages among them. By far, said Estrada, the largest group of students who pass through the center are Spanish speaking (60-65%), followed by those who speak Cambodian (about 33%). OthEr languages represented include Vietnamese, Lao, Hmong, Filipino/Tagalog, Samoan, Arabic, Korean, Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, Thai, French, Italian and German.

Many staffers, Estrada said, are native speakers who were themselves part of earlier immigrant waves. Included on her staff, she said, is a former Vietnamese general, a former Cambodian government minister and translators with doctorates in education from other countries.

During peak enrollment periods, she said, the center processes as many as 90 youngsters a day.

Numerous Forms Filled Out

They begin in a waiting room where they and their families are met by staffers who answer questions in their native languages and help them fill out the myriad of detailed forms necessary for school enrollments.

Next, the children are taken to an adjacent bungalow where they are tested for verbal and written English skills as well as general knowledge in their own tongue.

The third stop in the process is yet another bungalow where the Long Beach Health Department gives various immunizations and medical tests required by the state. And finally they are returned to bungalow No. 1 where a counselor explains educational options and, based on the results of the language proficiency tests and the wishes of the parents, ultimately assigns the children to schools and/or special programs deemed appropriate.

Although the process can be completed in a few hours, Estrada said, it often takes several days, especially when families must leave to obtain documents or wait for the results of medical tests.

One of the most popular educational options offered by the district for limited or non-English-speaking students, according to Estrada, are the Language and Learning Centers in which children of various ethnic and national backgrounds are grouped together for intensive one-year programs in English.

Other options include English as Second Language programs in which students are pulled out of regular classrooms for specific periods each day to work on English language skills, and bilingual programs in which 10 or more students who speak the same language are grouped together and taught in their native tongue while being provided with a gradual transition to English.

Not Yet Literate

A more recent option, according to staffers, is the Intensive Language Institute, designed exclusively for secondary students who are not yet literate even in their own languages.

Although counselors make strong recommendations on where students should be placed, Estrada said, final decisions are based on the wishes of the parents and the availability of space in the programs.

Not everyone is entirely appreciative of the services the center provides.

Vana Lafitaga, a native of Samoa whose three elementary school-age children were recently referred to the assignment center when they went to register at a neighborhood school, said he resented the inordinate amount of time it took to register them there.

“It could jeopardize my job,” said Lafitaga, a machinist who said he had taken an entire day off work to accompany his children to the center. Because the children had been born in the United States, he said, they speak fluent English and do not require special treatment.

“This is a waste of my time,” said Lafitaga, a nine-year resident of the country who recently moved his family to Long Beach from nearby Bell.

Benefit From Programs

Such complaints are not uncommon from immigrants who have been in the country a while and believe their children are competent in English, according to Tom Lau, the center’s facilitator. Nonetheless, he said, the district requires Assignment Center assessment of all children in homes where a language other than English is dominant because experience has shown that such children can often benefit from intensive English programs.

Some people “think their children know English, but they don’t,” said staff interpreter Loimata Mailoto, herself a Samoan. “If we didn’t do this, their kids wouldn’t understand (what was going on in school) and might drop out.”

In the case of the Lafitaga offspring, she said, testing indeed revealed that the children could benefit greatly from special English instruction.

Educators at the county level consider the Long Beach program--one of the first of its kind in the state--to be a model worthy of emulation by other districts. In fact, said Jo Bonita Perez, a consultant in multicultural education for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, she frequently refers interested individuals from other districts to Long Beach for tours of the facilities.

“It’s very unique,” she said of the program. “It provides a sensitivity that is essential.”

Unfamiliar Language

Added Chuck Acosta, a consultant in bilingual education for the same office: “It’s really an orientation program for the kids that alleviates the frustrations” of having to deal with a strange school system in an unfamiliar language.

Indeed, staffers say, it is the personal support they are able to provide that leaves them feeling good at the end of the day.