Anaheim : Brown to Give Address on Bilingual Education

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who is locked in a battle with Gov. George Deukmejian on the issue of bilingual education, will speak Friday on that continuing legislative fight.

Brown will address a luncheon session of the 12th annual California Assn. for Bilingual Education Conference at the Anaheim Hilton and Towers. The conference begins Wednesday and continues through Saturday.

Brown, a Democrat from San Francisco, last year authored a bill to continue the state’s current bilingual education program. That program, which requires a teacher in a second language if any ethnic group numbers 10 or more in a class, has been criticized by many Republicans in the Legislature as being “too rigid.” Brown’s bill failed to get a single Republican vote last summer when it barely passed the Assembly, and Deukmejian, who is Republican, ultimately vetoed the measure.

The state’s current bilingual education law will expire June 30. Assemblyman Frank Hill (R-Whittier), a critic of the state’s current law, has said he will introduce alternate legislation to reduce the scope of two-language teaching. Speakers during the conference are scheduled to discuss the growing movement in California and elsewhere in the nation for “English only” instruction and texts.