At the Dec. 8 meeting, the district addressed various issues in response to the advisory committee's checklist of questions, which stemmed from prior meetings.

Some of those questions pertained to whether the district had increased its number of disadvantaged students in the college preparatory classes and if it had developed a system for identifying the academic performance of its Latino students. These students include English Language Learners and socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

But the discussion was primarily one-sided, with the district explaining its direction while providing limited time for parent interaction.

However, one of the issues that did invoke dialog was what happens when students are placed in a class for English learners midyear.

San Jose Unified School District Director of the Bilingual Department Amparo DeAnda said the law requires that the enrollment center place the late-enrolling child at a school based in their neighborhood, not based on program availability. And once the child has been placed, the administrators at that school may advise parents on the language programs available, either bilingual or English-only programs.

When parent and advisory committee member Joan Cooper asked the district how schools met with every single parent of an English learner face to face to explain their child's instruction options, Trace Elementary School Principal Al Rosell said he "chased parents down the street" when they were picking up their child from school to speak to them.

San Jose Unified School District Director of Desegregation Sharon Andres added that once a child is placed in a language program, the school's resource teacher meets with parents annually to evaluate the child's progress.

Parent and advisory committee co-chair Martha Barahona expressed concern that parents of English learners may not know when to transfer their children into mainstream English-only classes or when the students have developed the necessary skills.

DeAnda said that English-learner coordinators communicate to parents when children need to be reclassified based on a battery of tests.

The elementary schools in Willow Glen that have at least 20 students in each grade enrolled in the bilingual—Academic Language Acquisition—program are Gardner, Galarza, Willow Glen Elementary and Canoas. Schallenberger Elementary School has fewer than the required 20 students per grade and will gradually phase out the program, Andres said.

There was also discussion about the district's voluntary-integration plan's focus on magnet schools.

The district maintained that its goal for the magnet schools was to reflect a balanced socioeconomic makeup in its elementary school population.

But Cooper said, "The magnets don't reflect the district."

Andres agreed that two of the three elementary schools, Hacienda and Hammer, "were not as diverse as we would like," but added that they had two years to improve or lose their magnet funding. She also said that the district is monitoring and assessing the need for "target recruitment" to schools that have a lower-than-average number of minorities.

Under Proposition 209, the use of racial criteria to integrate schools is prohibited, forcing the district to use alternative information—residential "geocodes" and the number of students who receive free or reduced-cost lunches—to determine the disadvantaged subgroup. Members of that subgroup are primarily Latino students.

The district recognizes that parents prefer to keep elementary schools neighborhood-based, but is also keeping open enrollment as a viable option for those interested.