The Willow Glen Resident

Few stick up for Unz proposal at Willow Glen public forum

By Michelle Ku

In January, the San Jose Unified School District board unanimously passed a resolution opposing the so-called English for the Children ballot initiative. Last week at a forum in Willow Glen, the initiative again met with many adversaries--and only one person spoke in favor of it.

"As a policy maker, as a teacher, I am personally against it," said California Assemblyman Mike Honda, who spoke at the March 26 forum along with Richard Hobbs, Evergreen Community College trustee and president of the San Jose/Evergreen Community College Board.

About 60 people came to St. Francis Episcopal Church for the discussion of the Unz initiative, authored by Palo Alto businessman and one-time gubernatorial candidate Ron Unz.

The initiative, which will be on the June ballot, seeks to prohibit bilingual education in public schools. According to the initiative, non-English-speaking students would be segregated in English immersion classes. The instruction would last a maximum of one year.

The forum, sponsored by the parent organization Community Alliance for a Responsible Educational System (CARES), did not feature anyone speaking in favor of the Unz initiative. Forum organizer Lindi Ramsden said she had contacted the English for the Children campaign office, but officials there chose to send a packet of literature rather than a speaker.

If the initiative is approved, programs such as River Glen Elementary School's two-way Spanish-English immersion program and Schallenberger Elementary School's "additive" bilingual program, both in Willow Glen, could be dismantled.

"We aren't taking away [the students' native] language and saying it's not important, but adding to it," said Carol Garcia, principal of Schallenberger, about the "additive" program, in which students learn a second language while practicing their native language.

The Unz initiative has a provision allowing parents to apply for waivers to place children in bilingual education classes. But Honda said he believes the provision is too restrictive.

To receive a waiver, the child must be proficient in English and pass a standardized test at the current grade level of the student or at the fifth-grade level, whichever is lower.

Honda said he disagrees with the initiative's claim that a non-English-speaking child is ready for a mainstream classroom after one year of English-immersion classes. "Is it a proper use of the children's time, is it a proper use of our instructional time to put the children all in one classroom and expect that after one year the children will be ready for a regular school?" he asked.

Citing his experiences learning Spanish, Hobbs said he agrees that learning English in 180 days is impossible. He said he took Spanish courses during high school and took two years of collegiate-level Spanish. He also spent two summers in two Spanish-speaking countries, Uruguay and Spain. Yet he did not feel competent in Spanish until living in Mexico for five years, he said.

"It takes at least two years to become functionally literate in a language and at least four to seven to become proficient," Hobbs said. "Last month I was in China, and I thought of the initiative. If I had to learn how to write all the Chinese characters and speak Mandarin in 180 days, I would fail."

Most of the speakers appeared to agree that the Unz initiative was flawed. Pedro Quinonez, a non-English speaker, demonstrated to non-Spanish speakers what it would be like to be immersed in a class where one does not speak the language, by giving a statement only in Spanish. He said he wants his seven children to have the opportunity to maintain their Spanish language as well as learn English.

One forum attendee, Willow Glen resident Eugene Gimelli, spoke on behalf of the initiative. Gimelli grew up in the Evergreen District 40 years ago, when the Hispanic population was about 15 to 20 percent.

"When [the Hispanics] came to school, they were ready to speak English," he said. "We didn't worry about teaching them in Spanish. The language of this country is English. We shouldn't waste money to teach them not to speak English."

Marilyn Dion, one of the CARES organizers of the event and a mother of two children at River Glen, responded, "But [parents] still have a choice to choose to send kids to English-only Booksin or bilingual River Glen."

While the forum mainly focused on the issue of bilingual education, Maria Ferrer, a member of the Santa Clara County Board of Education and chair of Education for All Children, said that is not the point of the initiative.

"This is not about the importance of bilingual education, but how to teach children," Ferrer said.

Hobbs agreed, saying, "The Unz initiative is about whether or not kids can learn English in a 180-day period and be proficient in English. If you think so, then go ahead and vote for the initiative."

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