Latino School Enrollment Tops Anglos : Schools: As their enrollment climbs, so does the number of students who cannot speak English proficiently. The district also reports a severe shortage of bilingual teachers.

Latino enrollment has surpassed Anglo enrollment for the first time in the Long Beach Unified School District’s elementary, middle and junior high schools, according to a report scheduled to be released this week.

Anglo students still make up the largest single bloc of the district’s total enrollment, but school officials said that Latino students will become the largest group by the end of the decade, if enrollment trends continue.

“It’s phenomenal,” school board President Jenny Oropeza said of the changes in the district’s student population in the last 10 years.

Lew Prilliman, the district’s research director, said that by the year 2000, Latinos will make up 40% of the district’s enrollment if the same growth pattern continues.

The district’s Anglo enrollment this year is 30.8%, down from 57.6% a decade ago, according to the district’s annual racial and ethnic survey. Latino enrollment has increased in that period to 29.4% from 16.2%.

In elementary schools, the survey found that 30.9% of the students are Latino, while 29.2% are Anglo. Latino enrollment in junior high schools and middle schools is 30.9%, while Anglo enrollment is 30.6%. In senior high schools, Anglos are still the largest group, making up 34.6% of the enrollment, while Latinos make up 25%.

The report also shows that total student enrollment continued to increase this academic year, surpassing administrators’ estimates by more than 1,000 students. “I wouldn’t say we’re bursting at the seams, but we’re pushing it,” Oropeza said.

Although administrators have been forced to reorganize schools to accommodate increased enrollment, they acknowledge that the growing number of students who can’t speak English poses a more serious challenge.

“It has a more significant impact,” Supt. E. Tom Giugni said. “(It) makes it much more difficult for us.”

While one of four students in the district cannot speak English proficiently, a much higher percentage of the youngest students have limited English skills, according to Giugni. In a survey during the 1988-89 academic year, officials found that 43% of the children in kindergarten and 42% of the first-graders could not speak English proficiently, he said. Last year was the first in which officials broke down the number of students with limited English proficiency by grade.

Like other districts across the state and nation, Long Beach has been unable to hire enough bilingual teachers.

Last year, for example, the district needed 231 Spanish-speaking teachers, according to a report by a Hispanic Advisory Committee. Instead, the district had 68 Spanish-speaking teachers. To meet the needs of its Cambodian students, the district needed 104 teachers, according to the same report, which was released last summer. The district had several Cambodian aides but no certified Cambodian teachers, officials said.

“We’ve been preparing but not adequately, simply because there aren’t enough bilingual teachers,” Giugni said. “We have to find a way to find more credentialed teachers who speak various languages.”

The superintendent suggested that the state relax its credentials requirements to make it easier for people who were teachers in their native land.

There are only three Cambodians with teaching credentials in California, according to Giugni. The Cambodian population in Long Beach is estimated at about 40,000.

“We assume that in our community there are many adults who were teachers in Cambodia,” the superintendent said. “We want to help them so they don’t have to jump all those hurdles again.”

To help create a new pool of bilingual teachers, the school board in November agreed to develop a program to encourage bilingual aides and students to become teachers. The board also agreed to develop a master plan to address the needs of its non-English-speaking students--including the district’s fastest growing group, Latinos.

The master plan is “long overdue,” Oropeza said last week. “It will address all areas relating to (non-English-speakers), including curriculum, services, testing and resources. What we have now is a hodgepodge of programs with no consistency for the kids or the teachers.”

While school officials expect Latino students to become the largest group, they also predict a significant growth in Asian enrollment.

Asians now make up 14.8% of the student population, compared to 5.4% a decade ago. In the next 10 years, 20% to 25% of the enrollment will be Asian, research director Prilliman said. The percentage of black students has remained about the same. In 1979-80, blacks accounted for 18.1% of the students in the district, compared with 19% this year, according to district statistics.

Although administrators had estimated about 68,000 students for the 1989-90 school year, enrollment at the end of the first school month had grown to 68,526, when the racial and ethnic survey was conducted. Since then, the number of students has grown to 69,106, compared with 67,077 during 1988-89, Prilliman said.

Administrators have been making adjustments in anticipation of growth.

To alleviate the expected crunch in elementary schools, for example, school officials began transferring sixth-graders from elementary schools to newly created middle schools for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders. Officials changed six junior high schools to middle schools last fall and plan to convert the remaining eight junior highs next September. Junior high schools had been attended by seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders. But all the ninth-graders have been transferred to senior high schools.

School officials also converted seven of the district’s schools to a year-round schedule, and they expect to change at least one or two additional schools next year.

In addition, the district opened one elementary school downtown last fall, is building another school in Signal Hill, and plans to build two others.

Administrators said the district’s enrollment is expected to grow in another 10 to 15 years to about 80,000 students.

BACKGROUND Ten years ago, the majority of Long Beach Unified School District students were Anglo. The Anglo enrollment first dipped below 50% in the 1981-82 school year.

ETHNIC MAKEUP OF STUDENTS IN LONG BEACH UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT Numbers and percentages of students enrolled in the fall of 1989.

ENROLLMENT ASIAN LATINO BLACK Number % Number % Number % Elementary 39,233 6,271 16.0 12,127 30.9 7,154 18.2 Junior High 11,709 1,347 11.5 3,623 30.9 2,451 20.9 High School 17,382 2,494 14.3 4,339 25.0 3,362 19.3 District Total 68,526 10,115 14.8 20,151 29.4 13,041 19.0 (K-12) ANGLO Number % Elementary 11,453 29.2 Junior High 3,580 30.6 High School 6,013 34.6 District Total 21,101 30.8 (K-12)

Note: Percentages may not total 100% because of rounding and the omission of ethnic groups with fewer students enrolled.

Source: Long Beach Unified School District.