Accord Reached on Teaching Tagalog in Southeast

Filipino-American students at Bell Junior High School in Southeast San Diego will be able to take a second-year course in the Pilipino national language, Tagalog, this fall at nearby Morse High School, under a compromise reached Tuesday by San Diego city schools trustees.

The board acted quickly to try to defuse a simmering dispute between the large Filipino community around the two schools and Morse Principal Virginia Foster, who had decided not to offer a continuation of the pilot first-year Tagalog course begun this school year at Bell. Most Bell students matriculate to Morse.

Trustees accepted a proposal drawn up hastily Tuesday by schools Supt. Tom Payzant after a decision by almost 100 students and parents of the Filipino community to picket the school district’s administration center and to press for a public hearing about their concerns. Under the plan, ninth-graders from Bell who took Tagalog this year will be eligible for a second-year course at Morse to be given at 7 a.m., an hour before school normally starts. The Bell teacher will head the course at Morse.

Payzant also said that administrators will work with Bell and Morse principals and teachers to create a permanent Tagalog curriculum for possible implementation in the fall of 1990. But he also scolded some Filipino speakers for making Foster a major target of their anger, saying that she had had legitimate questions about setting up a second-year course and that Bell administrators shared blame for not talking earlier with their Morse counterparts about continuing the language study.

Foster is black, and district administrators have acknowledged that there is black-Filipino community tension at several Southeast schools such as Bell and Morse, whose student populations have changed during the past decade from being predominantly black to having a Filipino plurality.

Bell is 42% Filipino, 23% white, 17% Latino and 15% black. Morse is 33% Filipino, 29% black, 16% white and 15% Latino. The high school receives students both from Bell and from Keiller Middle School, which is 44% black.

Bell Principal Joene Bruhn started the pilot course after several Filipino-American teachers and parents expressed interest in having their children learn their cultural language. Tagalog is accepted as a foreign language for college admission by the University of California and California State University systems, provided two or more years are completed satisfactorily at the secondary level.

Although originally intended for all students at Bell no matter their grade level, Bruhn had to restrict enrollment to 40 ninth-graders because so many students wanted to study Tagalog, she said Tuesday.

“We could have filled two classes,” Bruhn said. The priority for ninth-graders also created the problem leading to the tension that culminated at Tuesday’s meeting, a point Payzant emphasized in his comments.

“I guess we assumed that Morse would be eager to start a (second-year) course for the students who would be in the 10th grade next fall,” Bruhn said. “Maybe we didn’t communicate as well as we should have to Morse.”

But Filipino community leaders said Tuesday that Foster expressed little interest in setting up such a course and raised many questions about the curriculum and about who would teach Tagalog, concerns that they saw as roadblocks. Foster did not return phone calls Tuesday or attend the board meeting, and several Filipino spokesmen complained that the principal was uncommunicative with them during the past several weeks.

Rolando Cruz, a school district psychologist and former counselor at Bell, said that “the principal at Morse seems reluctant to start a course . . . she should have known that the kids would want the course, but the needs of the community are not being met. She is not sensitive to the needs of the Pilipino culture.”

However, several black parents active at Morse on Tuesday complained privately that Tagalog is not a legitimate language compared to Spanish, Japanese or French, which they believe are more attractive to students of all ethnicities.

Both Payzant and school trustees disputed the assertion, saying that courses in Pilipino language and culture should attract more than just Filipino students, especially if they become a permanent part of the curriculum.

“I think there could be a strong desire for such courses in the Mira Mesa area as well,” board member Jim Roache said.

But trustee Shirley Weber made a clear reference to concerns of black parents, saying, “I would hate to see us develop a curriculum that meets the needs of only a specific group . . . any language that we put in should be a language that everyone can learn . . . otherwise, we are being isolationist (that will) increase ethnic tension in our schools.”

Trustee Kay Davis spoke for a majority of the board in saying that long-range plans will be drawn up during the upcoming year for a Tagalog curriculum. Davis said that Bell might want to offer first- and second-year Tagalog while Morse might offer three years of the language to strengthen student transcripts for college.

Bruhn of Bell said she foresees second-year Tagalog at her school within a year or two. Beverly Foster, area superintendent for the Bell and Morse area (and no relation to Principal Foster), said Tuesday that Morse administrators “are receptive” to first- and second-year Tagalog at their school starting in the fall of 1990, which will allow more time for planning.

“That will allow us to have the benefits from the model and will make it easier for non-Filipino students to have a chance to take the language as well,” Beverly Foster said. She said also that the Morse principal probably did not consider Tagalog a “high priority” for this fall because of the need to implement the district’s new core curriculum on a schoolwide basis next year.

That core curriculum will require all students to take college-preparatory English, math/science and social studies courses to improve the overall level of high school study. It is forcing principals at all secondary schools to be more selective about what elective courses are offered in language and fine arts.

“Also, let’s face it, nobody likes to be pressured into offering a particular course,” Beverly Foster said, “and this got caught up in community tensions.”