U.S. Grant to Aid Schools’ Bilingual Programs : Education: Simi Valley centers will share $160,000 per year to teach the many students to whom English is a second language.

Two Simi Valley schools won a coveted federal grant for their bilingual programs that are trying to reach non-English proficient students who speak 18 different native languages, educators said Wednesday.

Royal High School and Sinaloa Junior High School will share $160,000 each year for the next three years starting this fall, Simi Valley Unified School District officials said Wednesday. The grant money will be used for teacher training, new instructional materials, and other projects.

Simi Valley’s award was one of only 32 grants given nationwide to school districts with special instructional programs.

“I’m very hopeful that this grant will have positive impact in our schools and in our community,” district Trustee Debbie Sandland said Wednesday. “We have to realize we live in a society that is becoming more culturally diverse and we have to address the needs of each student.”

With as many as 57 different languages spoken in the district, Simi Unified has struggled to provide services for its non-English speaking students, whose native tongues include Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.

“If you have three students who speak Mandarin, you’re not going to go out and hire a teacher,” said Rebecca Wetzel, coordinator of special programs for the Simi Valley district.

The federal grant, which could arrive as early as Friday, will provide training for general education teachers--not just bilingual educators--in how to teach students who speak various languages.

The district also plans to hire a community liaison to work with parents of bilingual students. The liaison will hold regular meetings with parents to discuss their child’s academic progress, and help the families adapt to American-style education.

Royal and Sinaloa were targeted for the grant money because they had the highest concentration of students speaking a wide array languages at the secondary level.

“At those two particular sites, we have about 225 kids that are limited-English-proficient students,” Wetzel said.

A study conducted by the district before applying for the grant showed some of those students were failing classes because of the language barrier.

On state standardized tests for reading, for example, seventh-grade students who speak English scored in the 61st percentile. But students who speak little or no English scored in the 19th percentile, Wetzel said.

Additionally, 55% of those students received a D or and F in one or more academic subjects, she said.

“Those kinds of statistics are glaring,” Wetzel said. School board president Carla Kurachi said the district has to address the needs of the quiet minority of non-English speakers in Simi Valley’s schools.

“The population is growing with people coming from other countries and we need to do something to assimilate them into our school system,” she said.

District officials were surprised Simi Valley schools were awarded the grant, because this was the first time educators had submitted a grant proposal.

“I think (we won) because we’re a large district, because we have multiple languages and because we’ve never had a grant before,” Wetzel said. “And sometimes, it’s luck.”