D21 picks Chenowith for dual immersion

Based on applause, that postponement idea was popular with the crowd at the North Wasco County School District 21 board meeting. About 50 people were in attendance for that portion of the meeting.

After the board voted to approve the plan, some people left in obvious disappointment, while a Hispanic woman stood up in the front row and said, “We really want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”

In dual immersion programs students are taught classroom content in two languages. One study of a million students found dual language students performed well above the general student population on standardized tests.

Proponents also said it is a way to honor Spanish as a language worth speaking and knowing, and it was a sensible direction given the large Hispanic student population here.

High school Advanced Placement teacher Mary Jo Commerford, who speaks Spanish, said having dual language programs will bring in Hispanic teachers who will be role models for students. “Students will see bilingualism as a coveted gift and not a problem to get rid of,” she said.

Voting to implement the plan in the fall were board chair John Nelson and board members Rebecca Thistlethwaite, Dawn Rasmussen, Michael Sullivan and Solea Kabakov. Voting against were Aparicio and board member Dave Jones, who both preferred that the plan be implemented a year later to give it more time to be developed and discussed with the community.

The program will have 25 students, which is a bit larger than the typical kindergarten classroom, and it was purposely made larger in case students withdraw from the program, Chenowith Principal Monica “Mo” Darnall said.

The district will continue adding a new grade a year and it will eventually extend through 12th grade.

Darnall stressed that nobody would lose their jobs over the program, but she acknowledged that teachers may have to move to different grades or different schools as adjustments are made.

Students in the program will be 50 percent native Spanish speakers and 50 percent non-Spanish speakers. Their lessons will be taught 80 percent in Spanish and 20 percent in English until third grade, when it will drop to 60 percent Spanish, 40 percent English. By fourth grade, it will be evenly split between Spanish and English, and starting in sixth grade through 12th grade, it will become 30 percent Spanish, 70 percent English.

Darnall said the committee looking at implementing the program got the message loud and clear that having the program at a magnet school that would draw students district-wide was not feasible.

Colonel Wright Elementary is centrally located, and it made sense for it to be that magnet school from a transportation point of view, but Darnall said Colonel Wright staff and parents made it clear how important maintaining their neighborhood school was to them.

To maintain that neighborhood school model, the dual immersion program will accept students from the Chenowith attendance zone first, and if any spots remain available, they will be open by lottery to students in the rest of the district. Parents in the other elementary school zones would have to provide transportation for their own children.

Chenowith has the most English language learners of the three D21 elementary schools in The Dalles. It is also the only school with a bilingual principal and lead secretary.

37 percent of Chenowith students are classed as “ever English Language learners,” compared to 17 percent at Dry Hollow and 25 percent at Colonel Wright.

In the kindergarten classes, specifically, Chenowith has 29 percent of its sudents were classified as “ever English Language learners,” compared to 15 percent at Dry Hollow and 27 percent at Colonel Wright.

Aparicio said about four months remained in the current school year, and he felt that wasn’t enough time to prepare for the program.

Jonathan Fost, the migrant education program director at Columbia Gorge Education Service District, said the program was purposely very small, requiring one teacher and one assistant.

One teacher, one assistant, in one classroom, “that’s easily doable in the amount of time” we have, Fost said.

Darnall said, “We’re starting small. We don’t want to overwhelm teachers. We don’t want to overwhelm the school. We want to do it right.”

Chenowith has three kindergarten classrooms.

Fost said 26 current staff in the district have expressed interest in working for the program.

A staff survey showed 80 supported the district starting a dual language program, 24 did not.

Asked if they supported it at their school, 53 said yes and 50 said no.

Board member Solea Kabakov said she felt the board needed to have trust that staff are capable people who will “rock” the new program. She also said the board has told the three top candidates to be the next district superintendent that the program was in the works. Putting it off a year might send the wrong message, she said.

She also worried that funding for the curriculum and staff development might be jeopardized by waiting a year.

Board member Dawn Rasmussen said she was torn because she saw the urgency of starting the program and that funding might be contingent on starting in the fall. But she said she hasn’t heard about planning for the second, third and fourth years of the program.

She noted Chenowith “will be a completely different school in four years” given required staff changes. She said no staff planning was in place for future years of the program.

Superintendent Candy Armstrong said of staffing that there are openings in the district every year and that since the district hopes to create several special assignment positions for teachers next year, there will be even more openings as staff seek to fill those special assignments.

Armstrong said it was a reasonable expectation for the dual immersion program to add one new teacher and one new assistant per year.

Some parents were upset that a parent meeting set for late January was cancelled. Fost said, “we thought it was more important to speak with our teachers after hearing Colonel Wright’s concerns.”

He said they spoke with every teacher group. After talking to teachers is when parents are talked to, he said. “How could we talk to parents when we didn’t know what it was going to be?”

Aparicio said he worried the 25 students in the program would only be with those same students for their entire elementary school.

Fost said they would have a chance to mingle with other students at lunch and recess, but that they would also form strong, even lifelong bonds with each other, as would their parents.

Chenowith teacher Mary Tyree told the board before its vote that she was embarrassed that she was being asked questions she shouldn’t have to answer, such as why parents meetings were cancelled at the school.

“I am embarrassed that I can’t answer them because actual ‘communication’ has been limited and ‘the plan’ is being developed so poorly,” Tyree said.

She said classrooms have been the worst in her five years at Chenowith and in fact in her entire 12 years in education. Student behaviors continue to become more alarming, she said.

She said the school has been “starved” for support, and when the staff was “hit” with the dual immersion program they weren’t even told as a group, they were told in separate meetings that produced separate information.

Parent Katie Kuehnl said she didn’t support the new program, saying, “We’re going to get rid of extremely valuable teachers.”

She asked why the money for dual immersion was not being put in the special education program. She said she got only one flyer about the program, and the parent meeting was cancelled.

She asked, “the board doesn’t want to hear from parents about this program?” and got loud applause.

Darnall and others said several times that no teacher would be laid off, but they could be moved.

Kuehnl said her child at Chenowith was benefitting hugely from a new teacher, who would not be allowed to teach the immersion class because she didn’t know Spanish.

The Dalles High School senior Gheraldy Bobadilla talked about the current method of teaching English to Spanish-speaking students, which is to pull them out of class for instruction.

He said that meant he missed out on instruction time, which made it hard to catch up to his classmates.

Norma Ruiz spoke in Spanish to the board for some time before she motioned someone in the audience to come translate for her.

Ruiz turned to Commerford, the high school Advanced Placement teacher, and said, according to the translator, “I don’t know you, but you’re responsible for my son to go to university.”

She added later of Commerford, “God bless her, because my other three children have gone to university.”

Ruiz said when her children were at the high school, she went to the office, but  she didn’t get support for her children. “I was able to keep fighting when I wanted to fall.” She recounted how her children heard things at school like “go back to your country.”

She said her son would answer, “Who picks your fruit, who cuts your wheat?”

Ruiz said she wanted her son to have opportunities, including to be sitting where the board members were sitting. She, like several others, said there’s a lack of bi-lingual teachers in the district.

Ruiz said dual language programs weren’t just to benefit native Spanish speakers, but they helped native English speakers as well because they will have more job opportunities and better pay if they’re bi-lingual.

Fost said a nationwide study that covered one million students showed students in dual immersion programs performed significantly better on state testing than other students.

Darnall said the district was required four years ago to do something about how it teaches English language learners, because D21was in the bottom 10 percent of the state on test results for those students.

The district got a four-year grant to improve outcomes, and it pulled out students for instruction.

But the best method is dual immersion, she said.

It also meets standards under the state’s new Student Success Act, which has a heavy focus helping minority students.