School District Encourages Bilingual Skills

I am responding to Mr. Jerome Greenblatt’s letter of March 29 to clear up the discrepancies in his description of our programs featured in The Times on March 23.

First of all, the programs featured have as their goal that all students attending Saddleback Valley Unified School District schools be proficient (listening, speaking, reading and writing) in English.

The article, “Ethnic Diversity in South O.C. Schools on Rise,” featured a program where English is the language of instruction because of the variety of languages that are represented by the students.

The home language is still valued because it is part of the child.

Parents are encouraged to use the language in the home so that children do not lose their own language as they learn English.

The second article, “Early Start on a Second Language,” described our new two-way language-immersion program. This is a voluntary program and offers parents another educational option for their children.

The goal of this program is bilingual skills. English proficiency is an integral part of the program, as is the development of another language at an age where fluency is achieved at a much faster and more efficient rate.

Making foreign-language classes mandatory in high school is not as effective, because true fluency and proficiency in the second language is rarely achieved.

Mr. Greenblatt is right in stating that our world economy means that we have to communicate with each other. We are doing this through the programs available to students in the Saddleback Valley Unified School District that allow them to communicate in English and in another language.

Knowing more than one language is an invaluable resource for our country so that we can readily compete with other countries where knowing more than one language is the rule rather than the exception.

Saddleback Valley Unified is offering our students the choice to communicate in more than one language. We are equipping them to succeed and excel by embracing President Bush’s America 2000 national educational goals, which emphasize that “every student will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy.”

Through our educational programs, Saddleback Valley Unified is “preparing students to succeed in tomorrow’s world.”

MARIA S. QUEZADA, Ph.D

Bilingual Coordinator

Saddleback Valley Unified School District

Mission Viejo