Teachers from throughout the West Coast attending the California Association of Bilingual Education Conference visited the school on March 4 to see the success and strategies of its bilingual and "biliterate" education program.

"We try to create an island of Spanish," said Principal Cecelia Barrie, adding that students in kindergarten through second grade don't know their teachers can speak English.

"It's a win-win situation," she said, adding that bilingual education helps Hispanic children keep their native language fluency and helps English-speaking students learn a language widely used in the state.

Barrie said what has made the school successful is adherence to its program and to standards-based teaching, dedicated teachers and overwhelming parent support.

Susan Meredith, a visiting teacher from San Diego, said what stood out to her was the parents' participation in raising funds for the art and music programs and new playground equipment.

For Joellen Meyeroff, a teacher from Oregon, it was the fact that the program was schoolwide and not just in the lower grades.

River Glen, a magnet school in the San Jose Unified School District, works with students from kindergarten through eighth grade.

On this day, visiting teachers weren't the only ones impressed with the school.

"Seeing my monolingual child become a bilingual human being and interact in a different language [when traveling] in other countries" was a wonder, said parent Marilyn Dion.

While California voters chose to eliminate bilingual education in 1998 with the passage of Proposition 227, River Glen School was granted alternative-school status.

And its waiting list is one of the longest in the district, demonstrating its popularity with parents, said magnet resource teacher Linda Luporini-Hakmi, who has been with the school since its inception.

"When I ask parents why they want to send their children here, they say that this is what California will look like in 100 years," she said. Luporini-Hakmi added that the school is like a "microcosm" that teaches children skills that allow them to communicate and get along cross-culturally.

Parent David Abad waited two years on a waiting list to send his oldest child to the school. Now he has children in seventh, third and first grades who attend River Glen to maintain their traditional language, he said.

Hispanic parents who are sending their children to River Glen School say they are preserving their family heritage and looking ahead to a more cross-cultural future.

Luporini-Hakmi said that River Glen School's program has proved that if teachers have high standards, students rise to them.

"I'm proud of the high levels of achievement," she said. "You hear of closing the achievement gap. This school took the challenge of desegregation and showed that all kids can succeed."