Para Todos, La Educacion Que Necesitan

Karlo Silbiger

Two weeks ago I held Parent Teacher Conferences in my classroom. A mother of one of my students came without her son and she was unable to speak English. She was about to leave, figuring that there was no way for us to conduct a conference without a interpreter, when I explained that, while my Spanish speaking skills have diminished over the years with lack of consistent use, I knew enough for us to hold an important conversation about her son’s progress.

In the mid 1980s, my parents had recently moved into Culver City and were looking for an elementary school for me. They visited Lin Howe, our neighborhood school and were very impressed by the teachers. They also visited El Rincon, a school a bit farther away that housed a relatively unique program where the students learned to read and write in Spanish before English, from the very first day of Kindergarten, and would leave after 6 years of elementary school with some level of fluency. My parents had the same concern that many at that time had: would their child lose out on some of the important foundational skills taught in elementary school because of their being taught primarily in a foreign language? Did the proven results mimic the impressive theoretical framework? At that time there was not as much demand as now, so after a lot of thought, they took a chance and signed me up.

I went through the immersion program from kindergarten through 7th grade (when Culver City cancelled the program at the middle school), I then continued with Spanish in high school, taking and passing the AP Spanish Language test. Being taught in Spanish obviously did not negatively impact my academic skills as I did well throughout my schooling. I have always been very supportive of the immersion programs for 2 primary reasons. First, it is such a fantastic way for us to support the concept of a 21st century education. With a smaller world, a more internationalist economy, and a more culturally diverse Los Angeles, having a bilingual population creates a marked advantage for Culver City. But in addition, the language immersion programs have provided a needed form of school choice for our community. We are lucky in Culver City that we have 5 excellent elementary schools. However, providing parents with a choice has been proven to increase student academic achievement because families are matched up with a schooling system that best meets their needs. I hope that the language immersion program becomes a model for how we can add choice to all of our schools.

The more interesting thing about the immersion program is the way that it has at times created such a divide within our community. From the time that I began at El Rincon, my mom, who became a very active parent in both the PTA (which serves the entire school population) and ALL (which raised money to fund the adjuncts in the Spanish Immersion classes), found a below the surface tension between the parents from the neighborhood school and those from the immersion program. When my mom , Barbara Honig, ran for school board in 1993, she had to name a campaign manager from a different school so that she would not be seen as the “immersion candidate.” The tension surfaced the following year when the board decided to re-open El Marino and were determining who would occupy that school. The immersion programs didn’t want to move, the El Marino neighbors didn’t want to move, and there were a lot of unhappy parents at many board meetings. The board ultimately agreed with the neighbors, moving both immersion programs to El Marino. The divide continued.

Ultimately, our job as a community is to support the education of all students. That does not mean, necessarily treating every kid and every program equally. There are certain schools that have different needs and it would be irresponsible for a district to deprive them of the services needed to educate those kids just because other schools don’t need them. Much of the jealousy over the immersion program has come because El Marino is the only school of choice in the district. Farragut has a remarkable arts program, one that undoubtedly influences their school’s success. But why should that program only be open to the families that happen to live in that neighborhood? El Rincon has an amazing science lab. Their STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program should be open to all who are interested in that type of an education, not just those in close proximity. Again, effective education is about providing families with choice and then providing each program with the services needed to deliver on their individual needs.

After over 40 years, the immersion program in Culver City (the first in the nation, by the way), is still going strong. We start almost 180 kindergartners each year in a classroom with a teacher who does not instruct in English. However, after all that time, the immersion program at our middle school is still in need of a complete overhaul. As I mentioned, when I was in middle school, the immersion program there had become so deteriorated that it was pulled from the schedule altogether. Immersion is about students being (for lack of a better word) immersed in the language throughout the day. Taking 1 class in Spanish or Japanese, no matter how great the teacher or the curriculum, is simply not a true immersion program. Immersion is also about teaching language through content. Without content, the depth of language instruction is simply diminished.

About 18 months ago, I made a recommendation that we institute a full immersion program at the middle school, one that complements the successful program at El Marino and La Ballona. My suggestion was that students would receive 50% of their instruction in the target language and that all 3 classes would be content-based. That has not yet occurred. Part of it is the inherent slow pace of government change. But I think part of it relates back to that misconception in our community that anything different for one group of students may lead to special treatment. For students who have worked hard to be on the way to fluency in a second language by age 10, we have a moral obligation to continue their effective instruction in that language. This is not about special treatment, it is about providing our students with the instruction that they need, the central duty of any school district.

Karlo Silbiger is the Co-Editor of the Culver City Progress Blog, the President of the Culver City School Board, and the Former President of the Culver City Democratic Club.