Legal complaint filed against school district's English Learner policies

Of the many Southland public school students who study English as a second language, most are Spanish speakers. KPCC’s Adolfo Guzman-Lopez reports that a federal complaint filed Tuesday against an area school district sheds light on the challenges of providing adequate English learner instruction.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez: One of every four students at Centinela Valley Union High School District east of L.A. International Airport is an English learner. That’s about the statewide average. A Bay Area legal advocacy group alleges that the district discriminated against some of those students by moving English learner services to a campus miles away.

Centinela Valley Superintendent Jose Fernandez says the district’s already making some changes the legal group suggested. He says demographic shifts led the district to relocate its Newcomer Center.

Jose Fernandez: The students served by our newcomer center, those are the most recent arrivals, we have been seeing those numbers dwindle. Recent arrivals from other countries, there’s tougher border policies and immigration policies in general, have impacted the number of recent immigrants coming into our district and in general into the country and the metropolitan area.

Guzman-Lopez: Loyola Marymount University Education researcher Magaly Lavadenz says she’s not surprised by this legal complaint. She calls it one indication of parents’ frustration with the poor quality of much English learner instruction.

Magaly Lavadenz: We have a very significant problem with the English Learner achievement rates. And since Proposition 227 passed in 1998 it’s gotten worse.

Guzman-Lopez: That voter-approved measure, written by critics of illegal immigration, eliminated bilingual education in California public schools. These days, school districts offer the instruction only when parents request it. Lavadenz says districts have to navigate federal and state rules to teach English learners, and budget cuts add more weight to school districts’ instructional burdens.