HUNTINGTON BEACH : Early Testing Gives Students Better Start

Classes in the Ocean View School District do not begin until Wednesday, but for the last week hundreds of students have been taking a battery of tests.

The exams are going on at the district’s inaugural language assessment center, opened at Oak View Elementary School this month to help new students with limited English skills get onto the proper learning track as quickly as possible.

The center is a one-stop facility where parents can have their children registered for classes, tested for English proficiency and, if needed, inoculated against childhood diseases. The pilot program will be expanded next year, when Ocean View implements a sweeping integration and grade-realignment plan.

School officials say they hope the effort will help clear away many of the obstacles faced in the past by parents and students who speak little or no English.

Ocean View’s enrollment of non-English-speaking students has steadily grown in recent years and is expected to reach a new peak this year. In previous years, new students whose primary language was not English had to endure a prolonged, tedious registration process, usually after the school year was well under way.

Under the old procedure, parents took their children to the school office and waited in line to register, perhaps with 10 other families, said Karen Colby, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction. Non-English speakers often had to wait hours before a translator could be found to assist them, she added.

Students “could miss the first morning of class,” Colby said. “And if they didn’t have their immunizations, they couldn’t go to class at all. . . . It wasn’t particularly coordinated or organized in past years.”

Under state law, school districts may take up to 30 days to test students for language skills, and so it typically took until October to get students enrolled in the appropriate English class, she said.

“But now, we can get all of this done in one day,” Colby said. “They’re getting a jump start on school by getting all that behind them. Teachers know what students they’ll have and what the language ability of each student is.”

More than 300 students were registered and tested for English skills in the center’s first seven days of operation. That is more students than the district processed last year through the month of September, Colby said.

After completing a language survey, parents of children who speak a language other than English make an appointment at the language center.

At the facility, parents fill out registration forms--available in English, Spanish and Vietnamese--and meet with an adviser who speaks their language. The adviser describes the district’s free-lunch program, migrant-education information, adult classes in English as a second language, and other available services.

From there, students are tested for language proficiency, both in English and their native language. Immunizations shots are provided each Friday in September at the center. For latecomers, the facility will remain open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. through Sept. 27.

The program is run by one paid employee, Mary Ann Kelly, with the help of 29 volunteers.

With the program just getting started, the volunteer group has been working out logistical snags, “just paper work, mostly,” Kelly said. Beginning next school year, the center will be open year-round and will be coordinated with elaborate, districtwide desegregation effort.

By then, Colby and Kelly said they hope to expand the program to encourage parents to become more closely involved in their children’s education.

“That’s the important thing, to get these kids to stay in school,” Kelly said. “By getting parents involved, hopefully the children will realize that education is important. That’s our key.”