Anti-Bilingual Education Resolutions Considered : Schools: Districts in Anaheim and Westminster may send messages of disapproval to state lawmakers.

In what may signal a growing attack on bilingual education in Orange County, two school districts are considering resolutions that condemn a state-mandated language program designed to mainstream non-English-speaking students.

If approved, trustees in the Anaheim Union High School District and Westminster School District would be among the first in Orange County to officially denounce the language instruction program. Both resolutions contend bilingual education, which teaches students mostly in their native languages, slows the efficient learning of English.

Trustees with Anaheim Union, which has 26,000 students and more than 61 languages spoken in its high schools, will vote on the resolution tonight. Trustees with the Westminster School District, which has about 8,600 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, will consider its resolution Monday.

If approved, neither measure would dismantle language programs already in place. Instead the school boards’ positions would be forwarded to state legislators in the hopes they would reform the language program, backers say.

“If you want to train these kids to be busboys, just keep on what you’re doing in this program,” said Anaheim Union Trustee Harald G. Martin, who also is considering a board measure to sue Mexico to pay for the education of illegal immigrant students. “But if you want these kids to become doctors and lawyers, you are going to have to change the way you’re doing business.”

It was unclear Wednesday whether the Anaheim school board will have sufficient votes to pass the measure, which also criticizes the state for usurping local control of education.

Anaheim Union Trustee Joanne L. Stanton said she will reject the resolution.

“In our district, we’ve fashioned a program that really meets the needs of our young people,” said Stanton, who has served on the board since 1979. “I wish he (Martin) would spend some time to study the second language program and see that it works.”

Stanton said the resolution unwisely turns schools into a battleground for partisan politics.

“This is straight out of the Republican platform,” she said. “And that really bothers me. This kind of fight doesn’t belong in schools.”

However, in the Westminster School District, trustees appear ready to approve their resolution. Three new school board members--Sondra Rinker, Lynn Covey and Michael J. Verrengia--ran for election opposing bilingual education.

In addition, the Westminster Teachers Assn., angered that its members must enroll in Spanish and Vietnamese language classes to instruct their students, has already approved a similar resolution attacking the bilingual program.

“The state and district seem more concerned with teachers learning to speak and teach in a foreign language than they are about our students learning English,” said Carolyn Anderson, president of the Westminster Teachers Assn. “This just doesn’t make sense to our teachers.”