Bilingual Program Unveiled for Schools : Education: Faced with a dropout rate among Latino students of nearly 45%, Long Beach officials mandate more services for children who don’t speak English.

Local education officials unveiled a plan this week to force schools to provide more services for children who don’t speak English--a strategy aimed at rescuing a growing number of students who fall by the wayside.

The sweeping proposal mandates a bilingual program--using the master plan as a guide--for every school with 10 or more students who do not speak English but do share another tongue and are in the same grade.

“Clearly, quality instruction for (such) students requires the presence of a competent and fully trained teacher in the classroom, and this has not consistently characterized Long Beach programs to date,” the master plan noted.

According to a previous state study, the dropout rate among Latino students in Long Beach is nearly 45%, about double the rate of Anglo students.

The local master plan includes two new programs for the Long Beach Unified School District: a model bilingual school at Edison Elementary School for students who are not proficient in English and a centralized “Newcomer Center,” a one-year program for all new immigrant students who have very limited proficiency in English. Both are scheduled to begin this fall.

The sweeping proposal, which was submitted Monday to school board members, also suggests incentives to encourage teachers to prepare themselves better for Long Beach’s classrooms, where one out of every four students cannot speak English.

“I know of no other school district in the state, except Los Angeles, with a program as comprehensive as this one,” Mike Garcia, who supervised the development of the master plan, told the school board. Garcia is the outgoing director of Limited English Proficient Services.

Board members praised the committee’s efforts and agreed to distribute the master plan to schools so principals can begin preparing bilingual programs for the fall. The board expects to adopt the master plan later in the summer, after receiving more comments from community groups.

A group of 50 teachers, principals, district officials and leaders of the Latino and Asian communities contributed to the plan, which was first proposed by the Hispanic Advisory Committee last summer.

Martha Estrada, who will succeed Garcia, said the proposal to require individual schools to establish programs for such students is the cornerstone of the master plan. “This will obligate a school to formulate a plan and do whatever it takes to implement it,” she said. “It’s saying ‘You will do this. You will be accountable for its implementation.’ We’ve never had that before.”

Estrada’s new office has been renamed the Program Assistance for Language Minority Students.

School Board President Jenny Oropeza praised the proposal, saying it represents “a big leap, . . . a very responsible approach to the challenges we’re facing.”

She described the existing system as “a patchwork of programs not sewn together.”

Garcia said the existing programs are in a hodgepodge and are sometimes rendered useless because of the way they are run. For example, a student may have been placed in a bilingual program in first grade, assigned to a regular class in second grade and switched back to a bilingual class in third grade.

“There’s no continuity there,” Garcia said.

The master plan, however, lists several programs that do not involve a bilingual teacher. A modified bilingual program, for example, calls for teams that can include a bilingual aide teamed with a monolingual teacher.

“So even if there are no certified bilingual teachers available, there are other programs the schools can adopt. They will have no excuse,” Estrada said.

Latino leaders praised the plan.

Margie Hernandez, vice president of the Long Beach chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, told the board: “There’s an urgency for change in this school district. (Until now) there has been continued failure to face up to the need for change.”

She is a member of the master plan committee.

While applauding the district’s new emphasis on such students, some Latino leaders said the proposal still has some deficiencies. The plan, for example, does not offer detailed suggestions or guidelines for recruiting more bilingual teachers and other staff members, said Jerome Torres, chairman of the Hispanic Advisory Committee.

Torres also criticized the request that the school board “seriously consider” a pay differential for bilingual teachers.

He said that proposal should have been stronger and contended that extra pay is crucial if the district hopes to attract and retain bilingual teachers.

Torres, who also contributed to the master plan, said the district is losing some bilingual teachers to the Los Angeles Unified School District, which pays bilingual teachers an extra $5,000 annually.

The Teachers Assn. of Long Beach has traditionally opposed a pay differential for bilingual teachers. Union officials could not be reached for comment.

The master plan calls for several changes aimed at increasing the number of personnel prepared to deal with such students. The plan, for example, would require teachers seeking a promotion to complete a course on how to teach students who do not speak English. It also proposes various incentives, including more money, for teachers who undertake additional bilingual training.

The district’s difficulty in recruiting, retaining and training qualified staff “has been due, at least in part, to lack of incentives, lack of districtwide support for bilingual teachers and programs and lack of consistent-quality programs,” the plan said.

In a report to the state Department of Education last year, district officials said Long Beach needs 520 more teachers who are trained to instruct students who do not speak English. The district has 117 bilingual teachers.

The number of such students in the district has increased in the last decade, from 4,397 in 1980, or 8% of the total student enrollment, to 19,387 in 1990, or 28% of the enrollment. About 60% of these students are Latinos, and 24% are Cambodians, according to district statistics.

Other recommendations include:

* Increased recruitment of bilingual librarians, counselors, school nurses and other school personnel.

* A test to rate a teacher’s proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing in Spanish if the teacher claims to be bilingual but has not gone through any special training.

* A program to encourage bilingual teacher aides to become teachers.

* Spanish classes for Spanish-speaking students and Khmer classes for Cambodian students.

* A committee to develop a program of self-esteem and multicultural awareness in the schools.

* Community-service credits for to high school students willing to help elementary-school students who do not speak English.

L.B. STUDENTS OF OTHER LANGUAGES

Chart shows enrollment growth of foreign-language-speaking students in Long Beach public schools over a 10-year period. The second column lists the percentage of those students in the first column who have limited English proficiency (LEP*).

SPANISH-SPEAKING

Percentage Year Number With LEP* 1980 2,291 52.1 1982 4,515 57.8 1986 7,694 56.2 1990 11,696 60.3

CAMBODIAN-SPEAKING

Percentage Year Number With LEP* 1980 297 6.8 1982 1,336 17.1 1986 3,324 24.3 1990 4,663 24.1

VIETNAMESE-SPEAKING

Percentage Year Number With LEP* 1980 394 9.0 1982 723 9.3 1986 740 5.4 1990 763 3.9

TAGALOG-SPEAKING

Percentage Year Number With LEP* 1980 38 0.9 1982 200 2.6 1986 442 3.2 1990 645 3.3

OTHER LANGUAGES

Percentage Year Number With LEP* 1980 779 17.7 1982 1,041 13.3 1986 1,495 10.9 1990 1,620 8.4

Source: Long Beach Unified School District