HUNTINGTON BEACH : Schools to Beef Up Bilingual Programs

In an effort to better address the needs of Latino and Asian students, the Ocean View School District plans to spend more money on bilingual programs and desegregate a school with a predominantly Latino population.

The district is spending an additional $138,000 to increase the number of bilingual teachers and expand programs aimed at helping students with a limited knowledge of English. The extra spending boosts the district’s bilingual education budget from $255,000 to $393,000.

And earlier this month, the school board appointed a 42-member committee to devise a plan for desegregating Oak View School, which is about 75% Latino. The committee of parents, teachers, community representatives, administrators and other school officials, will propose a plan to the board in December that could include busing and boundary changes.

The two-pronged approach aims to ease pressure from state education agencies and local activists who say the district needs to do more to meet the needs of limited-English students. By the end of the 1989-90 school year, Ocean View was the only district in Orange County that had not satisfied state requirements to recruit and train more bilingual teachers. The district has since devised a plan that complies with state mandates.

Ocean View, which last year had only nine instructors qualified to teach more than 1,100 limited-English students, has doubled its bilingual teaching staff for 1990-91, Assistant Supt. Joseph Condon said. In November, four more teachers will attempt to become certified.

More than one-third of the additional spending will be used to add five bilingual teacher’s aides to classrooms. The rest of the new money will be used to expand bilingual programs, buy about $20,000 in materials for limited-English speaking students, and train more bilingual teachers.

Meanwhile, the newly appointed Oak View Integration Advisory Committee will begin meeting this month to study the racial imbalance among the school’s student population. At the beginning of last school year, Oak View Elementary, near Beach Boulevard and Slater Avenue, had 618 students. The population was 70% Latino, 14% Asian, 14% white and 2% black, according to district figures.