IRVINE : Free Classes Offered to Spanish Speakers

Irvine Valley College will launch a pilot project in the spring to enroll more members of the local Spanish-speaking community.

Beginning in April, the college will go into Spanish-speaking neighborhoods to offer English and remedial classes, said Bill Hewitt, the college’s dean of economic development and special programs.

“What we are hoping is that this will promote the college in the (Spanish-speaking) community and encourage its members to come into the college and develop marketable skills,” Hewitt said. “The alternative is that we ignore them and they will remain second-class citizens.”

Neighborhood churches, and possibly schools, in Tustin, Laguna Beach, El Toro, San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente will host classes, Hewitt said, although no sites have been finalized yet. He said the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County is offering some of its facilities.

“Many of these people are uncomfortable coming directly to the college,” Hewitt said. “So we want to offer the classes in places that they already frequent.”

He said it is hoped that the classes, which are free, will eventually lure 1,500 new students to the college.

Hewitt said the college had substantial numbers of Spanish-speaking students when it offered the English and civics classes that were required as part of the federal amnesty program of the late 1980s, which helped undocumented workers qualify for legal residency.

But most of those students left the college after completing the basic amnesty classes, giving Irvine Valley little opportunity to provide them with a college-level education, Hewitt said.

“It was our concern because it is a fact in the Spanish-speaking community, there is not that much of an emphasis put on higher education, mostly because those people have had to place an emphasis on survival,” he said. “But we need to break that cycle. We need to introduce them to our culture and society, without stripping them of their own identification.”

Lilia Powell, executive director of the Orange County Coalition for Immigrant Rights and Responsibilities, said she is pleased with Irvine Valley’s plan.

“The need is great,” she said. “There needs to be a realization that there is a whole community here in the South County that has been able to make itself almost invisible from the rolls of local colleges. If we do not educate this population, we will instead wind up with problems.”