Schools Set for New Era of English-Only

By LIZ SEYMOUR

Sept. 8, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

With new textbooks ordered and staff retrained, the Capistrano Unified School District has declared itself ready to dump bilingual education for English-only instruction.

“It’s full steam ahead,” Supt. James A. Fleming said. “No equivocating.”

Teachers in the La Habra City School District are stripping Spanish posters and library books from classrooms so that no more than 20% of room decorations or learning aids are in a language other than English.

And in the Tustin Unified School District, which hasn’t taught bilingual education in at least a decade, school officials are, well, not doing much of anything.

“We’re pretty much all set,” said Margaret Sanders, the district’s English language development coordinator. “We’re watching everybody else go nuts in the neighboring districts.”

As many of Orange County’s 460,000 students return to public-school classes today in the post-bilingual era, the changeover generally appears to be less frantic than some educators had feared.

No one is balking at the new state mandate to teach students in English, despite early protests. Many districts have been in compliance with Proposition 227 for years, having abandoned native-language instruction long before the June referendum. Others are determined to go along with the new plan, known as English immersion.

“We really want to get our students in English as quickly as possible,” said Yvonne Davis, an assistant superintendent in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District. About 15% of the district’s 25,000 students have limited English skills. “The superintendent has set the tone that we will not defy the law.”

During the last two months, educators rewrote lesson plans, shopped for texts and advised teachers and parents. Not that the transition is all sewn up.

Some classrooms have yet to receive the English-language textbooks they ordered over the summer. School administrators are still trying to figure out how to deal with parents’ requests that their children be taught through bilingual education, as the law allows them to do.

Most districts bought texts to help foreign-language speakers learn English, as well as supplemental readers, posters, cassettes and flashcards, spending upward of $50,000.

Santa Ana Unified has spent $600,000 on new language-arts textbooks, said Howard Bryan, the district’s director of English language development and bilingual programs. But more texts are needed and the district expects to spend at least $2 million altogether.

Nowhere are the challenges more obvious than in Santa Ana, the county’s largest school district, where 71% of the 50,000 students lack English fluency.

Even before Proposition 227, a third of the schools’ limited-English population was learning in English-immersion classes. Still, Santa Ana had a well-established bilingual program backed by many parents, teachers and administrators who were reluctant to change.

Opponents of bilingual education already are angry with the school district, saying it has tried to circumvent the law by encouraging parents to seek waivers.

Under Proposition 227, after the first 30 days parents can apply for waivers that would allow their children to return to bilingual education. Santa Ana’s policy sets up individual or small group meetings with parents in their native language in which they are told about their right to a waiver.

“It just gives [you] the attitude that the Santa Ana school board is trying to talk parents into opting out of English immersion,” said Jim Colon, a parent of four students in the district and a school board candidate running on an anti-bilingual-education platform. “Who’s going to police this?”

But school administrators in other districts said they are not expecting waves of parents seeking waivers. In the La Habra school district, which has a 39% limited-English population, officials expect the only waiver applications to come from Spanish-speaking parents who were active in the district’s now-defunct bilingual program. Most parents in the district supported English immersion.

“They have the misconception that if their kids are in a bilingual class, the kids were not learning English,” said Gail Reed, the director of bilingual instruction.

An estimated 139,000 Orange County students--or 30% of the countywide total--are considered not fluent in English. Statewide, about 25% of all students are so classified.

To comply with Proposition 227, officials with all 27 districts said they intend to provide classroom instruction solely in English. Some classrooms also will have bilingual teaching assistants. In addition, schools must offer an intensive English language development program, called sheltered immersion or a newcomer program, geared to students who understand little or no English.

Teachers are allowed to speak a few words of a foreign language to prompt students or ensure they understand the lesson. But many of those newcomer classes will have teachers who speak only English, so during the summer, schools have been training teachers in using pictures and hand gestures to communicate.

It’s not an easy task, as a faculty-training session proved to 140 La Habra teachers who work with kindergartners through third-graders.

Kayee Conrad, a sixth-grade teacher, began the session Friday by speaking rapidly in Chinese to the English-speaking teachers and pointing at different members of the group. Implicit lesson: This is what it sounds and feels like for your students who do not speak English. First, the confused crowd of 140 teachers was silent; eventually, nervous laughter floated through the conference room.

Only when Conrad singled out a woman wearing a red shirt and another in a blue dress, handed out color-coded cards to each teacher and displayed a chart with the primary colors did the audience understand the lesson.

“These children could be sitting there kind of frustrated and scared,” said Julienne Fliss, a kindergarten teacher in the district. “We need visual prompts to help anyone having trouble.”

Teachers had feared some of the initiative’s wording that says they could be responsible for willfully violating the law. But two months after the passage of Proposition 227, those concerns have been alleviated, officials said. The mandate gives teachers more flexibility to use other languages than they had thought.

Fleming in Capistrano, where 13% of students are not fluent in English, said he held several meetings to reassure teachers. He told them: “There aren’t going to be Unz policemen looking over your shoulder,” referring to Ron Unz, the Palo Alto businessman who wrote Proposition 227.

English-only programs are hardly untested in Orange County, where a conservative climate fostered the beginnings of the anti-bilingual movement. In January 1996, the Westminster School District was the first in California given state approval to avoid bilingual education. Three more districts in the county won similar approval, the largest being the Orange Unified School District.

Some other districts had too few limited-English students to ever start a bilingual program. And in some, students spoke so many languages that a traditional program would have been impossible.

Tustin, where 29% of the students are not fluent in English, has used a form of immersion for 10 years, with the state’s permission. District officials had to report test scores and other data annually to the state to prove students achieved with immersion. Teachers gave lessons in English, with help from bilingual classroom aides, and will continue to do so, officials said.

“Most school districts in California had the majority of students in some form of English-immersion programs,” said Norman C. Gold, the language proficiency manager for the California Department of Education. Just 30% of the state’s limited-English population was taught in bilingual-education programs, he said.

Teachers who favor bilingual education are being told to set aside their beliefs, resist the urge to speak Spanish in front of the chalkboard and comply with the new mandate.

“They’re grown-ups,” said Judith Magsaysay, principal at Santa Ana’s Pio Pico Elementary School.”I think they’re handling things as professionally as they can. But I’m not going to say it’s easy.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Districts’ Plans

As most Orange County students return to school this week, the biggest change in the classroom, by far, is the end of bilingual education. Proposition 227, which passed by 61% of the vote in June, essentially eliminated bilingual instruction. Students must now be taught in English, regardless of their ability to understand the language. Here’s a look at what all 27 districts in Orange County are doing to comply with the new mandate:

School District: Anaheim City

% limited-English students: 61%

First day of School: Year-round schedule

Plans for Implementation: Converting bilingual-education program into English-only instruction. Some limited-English students will get additional help in their primary language from instructional aides.

School District: Anaheim Union High

% limited-English students: 32%

First day of School: Thursday

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227, except for a few academic classes taught in foreign languages. They have been eliminated, but could be reinstated if the district receives enough parent waivers.

School District: Brea Olinda Unified

% limited-English students: 11%

First day of School: Sept. 3

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Buena Park

% limited-English students: 31%

First day of School: Wednesday

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Capistrano Unified

% limited-English students: 13%

First day of School: Thursday

School District: Centralia

% limited-English students: 22%

First day of School: Today

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Cypress

% limited-English students: 11%

First day of School: Wednesday

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Fountain Valley

% limited-English students: 13%

First day of School: Wednesday

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Fullerton

% limited-English students: 31%

First day of School: Today

Plans for Implementation: Two of the district’s 18 schools, Pacific Drive and Richman, are converting bilingual-education programs into English-only instruction. The remaining schools started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Fullerton Joint Union High

% limited-English students: 28%

First day of School: Today

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Garden Grove Unified

% limited-English students: 47%

First day of School: Thursday

Plans for Implementation: Most limited-English students learned in an English-only classroom before Proposition 227. Less than 1,000 students were enrolled in bilingual-education classes, which will be converted into English-only classes. Some limited-English students will get additional help in their primary language from instructional aides.

School District: Huntington Beach City

% limited-English students: 8%

First day of School: Wednesday

Plans for Implementation: Converting a few bilingual education classes into English-only, and some limited-English students will get additional help in their primary language from instructional aides. English-only instruction started in most classes before Proposition 227.

School District: Huntington Beach Union High

% limited-English students: 17%

First day of School: Wednesday

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Irvine Unified

% limited-English students: 10%

First day of School: Thursday*

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: La Habra City

% limited-English students: 39%

First day of School: Today

Plans for Implementation: Converting bilingual education program into English-only instruction. Some limited-English students will get additional help in their primary language from instructional aides.

School District: Laguna Beach Unified

% limited-English students: 4.5%

First day of School: Thursday

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Los Alamitos Unified

% limited-English students: 2%

First day of School: Today

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Magnolia

% limited-English students: 43%

First day of School: Today

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Newport-Mesa Unified

% limited-English students: 28%

First day of School: Today

Plans for Implementation: Ten of the district’s 19 elementary schools are converting bilingual education programs into English-only instruction. Some limited-English students will get additional help in their primary language from instructional aides. The remaining schools started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Ocean View

% limited-English students: 19%

First day of School: Thursday

Plans for Implementation: Converting bilingual education program for kindergartners through second-graders at Oak View Elementary into English-only instruction. All other schools started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Orange Unified

% limited-English students: 25%

First day of School: Thursday

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified

% limited-English students: 15%

First day of School: Tuesday

School District: Saddleback Valley Unified

% limited-English students: 7%

First day of School: Thursday

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Santa Ana Unified

% limited-English students: 71%

First day of School: Thursday**

Plans for Implementation: One-third of all limited-English students had English-only instruction before Proposition 227. The remaining students will now have English-only instruction, and some students will get additional help in their primary language from instructional aides.

School District: Savanna

% limited-English students: 26%

First day of School: Monday

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Tustin Unified

% limited-English students: 29%

First day of School: Today

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.

School District: Westminster

% limited-English students: 45%

First day of School: Wednesday

Plans for Implementation: Started English-only instruction before Proposition 227.