Parents Asked to Curb Students’ Use of Spanish

School officials have asked parents to discipline their children if they are caught speaking Spanish at school as part of a campaign to improve grades, the superintendent said Wednesday.

“We’re not out to start some kind of controversy,” Francis Brooks said. “The only thing we’re looking to do is help our kids do a little better.”

Brooks said he mailed about 370 letters on Wednesday, one for each child in the Tornillo Independent School District, asking parents to voluntarily sign a contract.

Promise of Discipline

“If you sign and return this letter, you are saying that you will discipline your child if we report him or her for speaking Spanish at school,” the letter says in part. “If you do not sign, nothing will be done to your child for speaking Spanish.”

The letters, in Spanish and English, say the campaign’s aim is to try to improve test scores and the students’ English-speaking ability.

Tornillo students generally score below state and national averages on standardized tests in mathematics, reading and language skills. The school district teaches English as a second language but cannot afford specialized bilingual-education teachers, Brooks said.

About 95% of the children in the school system are Latino and about 40% speak only Spanish or very little English, Brooks said. An estimated 60% of parents in Tornillo, a farming community about 30 miles southeast of El Paso, do not speak English at all, he said.

Enlist Parents’ Aid

Federal and state laws prohibit schools from punishing children merely for speaking a language other than English, so the school system is trying to enlist the parents’ assistance, he said.

“For the kids’ benefit, they must be able to speak English,” said Brooks, adding that he is not against children being bilingual. “I’d give anything if my kids were bilingual.”