Fallbrook Gamble Pays Off : Shifting Students, Bilingual Classes Works Better Than Expected

Three years ago, Fallbrook school administrators had a problem: A significant number of parents thought their children were getting a low-quality education because of the schools’ ethnic makeup.

But unlike similar protests in many school districts throughout the country, the pressure for greater integration came not from minority parents but from white parents in the avocado-growing center. They lobbied successfully for a radical restructuring of the way pupils attend the town’s three elementary schools so that their children could more easily avoid bilingual classes.

The move was intended to spread the district’s significant number of Latino students--in particular those Latinos with limited English ability--equally throughout the school population rather than have them concentrated in two of the schools.

Carried out over the past two years, it involved changing one school into a kindergarten-through-third-grade center, a second into kindergarten-through-fourth, and the third to a fourth-through-sixth.

Unexpected Results

The changes gave white parents more choices of all-English classes for their children, as intended.

But they led as well to what administrators say are improved bilingual classes, classes that have proven popular with white parents. In addition, there has been a greater ethnic mixing of students, reflecting the approximate 70% white-30% Latino student population.

The results--both those intended and those serendipitous--have all but ended the controversy that had embroiled the community. Parents and administrators who carried out the move to grade-level schools say it has worked better than expected. And even those who were opposed concede that the consequences were far less detrimental than they feared.

“I believe the school community is very happy that the program is working and that we are moving forward now,” said Kathy Seemann, a Fallbrook parent who opposed the restructuring and who now sits on the Fallbrook Union Elementary School District board. Seemann and other opponents have made no effort to move the district back to the more traditional system.

“Like any program, it has its advantages and disadvantages,” Seemann said. “It is working and certainly works excellently for a lot of people.”

Kindergarten teacher Penny Blanchard said, “The point was quality in the choices of classes offered (at each grade) rather than racial feelings. But (the change) has gotten parents much more positive about bilingual as well.”

How all of this has come about stems from circumstances that are peculiar to Fallbrook, a rapidly growing town of 28,000 people, traditionally the domain of avocado growers but with a developing contingent of both white-collar professionals and Latino laborers.

The district operates five elementary schools with about 3,330 pupils, and two of those schools are on the neighboring Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base and are for military dependents only. The other three are in Fallbrook. Two of the schools, Maie Ellis and Fallbrook Street, sit back-to-back in the older part of town, where many Latino families live. The third school, La Paloma, is about one mile east of those two, closer to newer subdivisions and avocado-dotted estates and ranches.

Under state law, a bilingual class must be offered if more than 10 students at a grade level are shown to have limited English ability based on testing and if all speak the same first language. In addition, the law says that one-third of the students in each class should be native English speakers (meaning the bilingual class should not contain all non-native students).

Participation by native speakers is voluntary. Because of the large number of Latino pupils at Maie Ellis and Fallbrook Street, two of the three classes at each grade level were bilingual, leaving only a single choice of teacher for parents wanting their children in an all-English class. That left many white parents unhappy, faced with placing their children in a very large monolingual class or in a bilingual class where they feared the instruction would be slower.

Also, if a student did not get along with the teacher or had a conflict with another student in the one class, the schools had less flexibility in moving the student.

“The Anglo parents also feared that half the instructional day was lost (in a bilingual class) and that their children would not move ahead as fast,” William Diedrich, district superintendent, recalled. “While I don’t think that perception is correct, it nevertheless was there and had to be dealt with.”

In addition, future student projections for the Maie Ellis and Fallbrook Street schools showed them becoming increasingly Latino while La Paloma would remain predominantly white.

“But I must stress that we acted not because of an ethnic imbalance alone but primarily because of a linguistic problem concerning instruction,” Diedrich said. “The imbalance was there, but it was not a legal problem.”

The New Structure

Under the change, Maie Ellis has become a kindergarten-through-third-grade school, and Fallbrook School a kindergarten-through-fourth school. La Paloma is now fourth-through-sixth. Pupils are bused to school, but because the district is so spread out, there has always been bus transportation. Each school now has about 30% Latino students, of which as many as half at each school have limited proficiency in English.

(Both Maie Ellis and Fallbrook Street were named California Distinguished Elementary Schools on Friday, among 32 in the county and 248 statewide out of 4,533 eligible to apply.)

“We’ve resolved a lot of linguistic problems,” Diedrich said. “Now, there are six classes or more at each grade level, with about one-third bilingual and two-thirds all English.”

Because of the greater number of classes, the schools have been able to institute new techniques, such as extensive team-teaching at each level, including crossovers between the all-English and bilingual classes.

In the bilingual classes, for example, the native English speakers will be given their reading and language arts instruction with a teacher from an all-English class. The non-native speakers will cloister separately with a third teacher for reading either in Spanish or English, depending on need. The groups then come together again for math, social sciences, art and other subjects.

As a consequence, the schools have not had problems attracting sufficient numbers of native English-speaking pupils into the bilingual classes.

“The fallacy before the change was that our bilingual courses were not as good” as the all-English courses, said Robert DeLuca, Maie Ellis principal.

“We run a true bilingual program, with 50% of the instruction in English and Spanish, and all the teachers are fully accredited. And we do a real selling job for the bilingual, encouraging Anglo parents to come in and look at how it is run.

“A lot realize that their kids have a greater opportunity to learn Spanish at an early age.”

(DeLuca and the teachers emphasized, however, that most Latino children move to all-English classes after two to four years, depending on the amount of previous schooling either in the United States or Mexico.)

Giving It a Chance

The team teaching and the ability of a parent to place a child in a bilingual class one year and an all-English class the next have eliminated most of previous fears, said Blanchard, a bilingual teacher at Maie Ellis.

Colleague Estela Bridges added: “And at least the parents of my students see how quickly the children pick up both English and Spanish and do learn as quickly as in other classes.

“I think more parents now give it a chance because it’s seen now in a positive light.”

DeLuca said the grade-level configuration also gives parents and students a chance to work with different social and economic backgrounds.

“I think the program has to result in better communication,” she said.

At first, Latino students were a little afraid because they had grown comfortable being cloistered at the two schools, DeLuca said. “But you now see them playing together with other kids.”

Principal Mike Choate at La Paloma said the changes have brought benefits for all students.

“Our instructional situation is far better now,” Choate said. “Also, for clubs, sports, and other activities, I’m able to organize around a more-focused age group, roughly 9 years to 12 years old.”

As for intermixing, Choate said that the bilingual classes “seem to have the warmest atmosphere.” Among almost 1,000 pupils at the three schools, he has found few problems of children ethnically isolating themselves.

Diedrich still encounters criticism from parents who find it inconvenient to have children in two different schools and who worry about small children getting off at the wrong bus stop. The three schools also must schedule athletic and other special events so that they don’t conflict.

“I’m still against grade-level schools, I still think it is forced busing; I haven’t changed my views on that,” said Walt Krueger, an original opponent who also sits on the school board. “I see less competitiveness in (after-school) sports between schools, and the basketball program has declined. Parents are just spread too thin when kids are going to two different schools.”

Seemann, the other original opponent now on the board, credited success to the willingness of both sides to work together once the decision was made.

“Basically, people wanted to maintain Fallbrook’s strong reputation,” Seemann said. “Certainly the bilingual program is working, and we are serving both Spanish speakers and English speakers . . . yes, it has become more attractive to Anglo parents.”

In addition, Fallbrook has just been mentioned in a congressional report on successful bilingual education, she said. “We’ve had good cohesiveness from staff and parents in all areas.”