After backing a controversial change last week to the way Spanish-speaking students are educated in local schools, Verona Area School District officials are refuting charges that the move was a "step backward."
The changes represent the "deliberative hard work" of a 12-person ad hoc committee that spent six months studying the issue before picking the best solution, said superintendent Dean Gorrell.
"It does represent a change, and sometimes that change comes hard - we get that," he said. "But this committee spent months reading and researching and looking at the data ... before they came to this decision. It was not a knee-jerk reaction. It was not a whim that was arrived at in an eleventh-hour, behind-closed-doors sort of thing."
The decision was made last Monday at an emotional school board meeting, where some 150 people - mostly Latino parents and district staff - showed up to oppose the committee's recommendations.
This year, more than 180 Spanish-speaking students are being taught in both Spanish and English in grades K-5 at Glacier Edge Elementary School. But with Glacier Edge running out of room, the board voted to split the bilingual program between Glacier Edge and Sugar Creek Elementary in 2009-10 and offer it only in grades K-3.
Spanish-speaking kids in grades 4 and 5 will be integrated into regular classrooms and will receive help from teacher's assistants, a change officials say will address concerns that Latino and white kids at Glacier Edge are too segregated.
That "scaling back" to K-3, however, irked parents and many teachers of bilingual students or English-language learners (ELLs). They claimed the change goes against research that shows Spanish-speaking kids excel when allowed to become fluent in their first language. And in conversations with a half-dozen ELL teachers over the past week, most of whom didn't want to be quoted, many told the Verona Press they felt left out of the decision-making process. Several teachers also said Latino families felt alienated.
"It felt like a slap in the face to some parents," said one teacher who asked to remain anonymous. "They felt (the issue) was decided a long time ago. ... There's going to be some hard feelings."
A long process
On Tuesday, Gorrell insisted the district made the right move and did it the right way.
To his recollection, he said, the district has never studied a curriculum decision so thoroughly.
"I keep going back to the process that was used. I understand that some people don't like the outcome. ... But I will defend the process we used as going well above and beyond anything, certainly, that we've done since I've been here (since 2005)."
He also questioned the notion that there's "one right way" to educate ELLs.
"There is no agreement in the research world in terms of which is the best method," he said. "So if anyone tries to trot out that one method is better than another, it just isn't so."
The committee met nine times in open session between January and June and hosted educational professionals from the University of Wisconsin and elsewhere.
One of those experts, Dr. Tim Boals, is executive director of a nonprofit consortium that studies effective ways to educate ELLs. On Tuesday, Boals agreed that most research shows Verona's current K-5 "late-exit" model for teaching bilingual students is a top alternative. But, he added, "I don't think it's that simple.
"What's true is that there is more than one successful model out there," he said. "While what Verona was doing before was a very good approach that I in general support and back up ... it's also true you have to look at the local context."
His take differs from that of UW-Madison associate professor of education, Maggie Hawkins, who last Monday asked the board not to undo its current bilingual program. But Boals said that's not surprising, given the complicated nature of bilingual education.
"Honestly, I see both sides of the issue," he said.
Why is it better?
Proponents of the change say it represents a subtle shift from getting Spanish-speaking kids totally fluent in Spanish first to finding ways to better their English skills at a young age. And the change was largely motivated by a desire to get all kids - Latino and non-Latino - sharing classrooms by fourth grade, Gorrell and others said.
"To help build those authentic relationships when they're sitting elbow to elbow with each other - we think there's tremendous value in that," Gorrell said.
That shift in fourth grade has some teachers worried, as that's a year many students experience a drop-off in learning that can affect their academic abilities for years to come, said Patty Werner, a high school ELL teacher with more than three decades of experience.
"In a general sense ... it's not a good time to subject kids to major academic and social changes," she said.
Others fear the change will further separate races because Spanish speakers who don't have a firm grasp of English will just "seek each other out," said Eric Osthoff, the grandfather of a child in Glacier Edge's bilingual program and husband of an ELL teacher at Verona Area High School.
But Gorrell said Verona's "top-quality teachers" won't allow that to happen.
"Our school district, regardless of the child, has never adopted a sink-or-swim mentality or ideology," he said. "We will never do that with any individual child or any group of children."
Gorrell also bristled at a charge leveled by Osthoff and others after last week's meeting - that the committee's conclusions were swayed by white parents at Glacier Edge who didn't like the segregation that came with the bilingual program.
"Absolutely not," he said. "Unequivocally no on that. It was not racially motivated by a group of white parents at all."
What's next
District officials this week said they felt the perception that they excluded Latino parents from the decision-making process was overblown, either by false rumors, misinformation or simply a lack of communication.
But board member Charyn Grandau acknowledged that the meeting underlined a need for the district to do more outreach with Latino families.
"There seems to be a lack of communication with the Latino community," she said. "That's a big concern for me. ... They need to know what our goals are for their children ... We need them to keep us accountable for their children's education."
That's starting to happen already, said John Schmitt, district director of community services. Fliers should be mailed to parents soon that will include times for parents to meet with school officials and bilingual staff about next year's changes. And he expects elementary schools will host a "parent night" for Spanish-speaking parents this spring, too.
Beyond parental communication, Schmitt sees "big changes" in the next few years, thanks to a separate recommendation from the ad hoc committee that calls for more "professional development." That essentially means extra training so all teachers are better equipped to work with English-language learners from a variety of backgrounds.
Likewise, Grandau and others hold out hope that the district will someday develop a program that will combine English and Spanish-speaking kids in a true "two-way" bilingual classroom. A new committee should form soon to study that option.
In the meantime, however, Gorrell said the backlash from last Monday's meeting is best answered in the classroom.
"What we will continue to do ... is put our efforts and energy into providing the best education for the children in our schools," he said. "That's the best form of public relations that we have, that we've ever had. Because what happens in our classrooms is where the rubber meets the road."
