The Evanston/Skokie School District 65 board heard from more than a dozen parents about the future of a bilingual education program at their Monday night meeting but will hold off key decisions until next month.
Parents of students in the Two-Way Immersion program, where classes are taught in both Spanish and English so that students can learn their non-native language, encouraged the board to keep the program concentrated in one or two schools, retain sibling admissions preferences and encourage its support on the administrative level as the board decides whether or not changes will be made.
“The administration of this program lacks focus,” said Sharon Sheehan who has a daughter in a first grade TWI class and asked the board to create a permanent coordinator or principal position to oversee the program. “It is time to support this program fully. … Spanish needs to have a more elevated status in our school or schools.”
Supporters said keeping “double-stranded” classes, or at least two classes per grade per school, encourages collaboration between teachers and children. They also said keeping sibling admission preferences in TWI would encourage families to participate instead of inconveniencing them by potentially forcing them to enroll their children at different schools.
Board member Julie Chernoff said the board asked District 65 administrators to present three possibilities for the program’s future, highlighting the one they think is best, at the Feb. 17 board meeting. She said she was pleased by what she saw in the TWI classes when she visited Dawes and Washington elementary schools — the two schools that currently offer the program — last week.
“The level of teaching and teamwork was clear,” Chernoff said.
“I often had difficulty in knowing which (students)were the so-called Spanish-dominated children and which ones were the English-dominated children,” board member Jonathan Baum said.
Board members also discussed considering TWI a “magnet program” when they discussed admissions to the two magnet schools, King Lab and Timber Ridge schools.
According to revisions to the proposed policy, some sibling and neighborhood preferences should be used in admissions, but the district should continue to primarily make decisions that “promote racial balance and relief of overcrowding” in neighborhood schools.
The board decided to wait to see a draft of a written statement on how admissions are decided before voting on the policy.
The board members also discussed their intention to include meeting the regulations of the No Child Left Behind Act — a federal law requiring schools to meet state guidelines in students’ test scores or risk losing federal funding — as a goal for the district in 2004-05.
Administrators said the district receives about $700,000 in federal funds that can be used in some district schools. Board members asked the staff to write a goal indicating they would pay particular attention to those schools.
“(The proposed goal) isn’t limiting our resources to those schools,” board member Mary Erickson said. “It’s focusing our resources to those schools with the implications that all schools get the … support.”
Parents of students in TWI also brought that law into their arguments for keeping the program as it is. One such parent was Christyne Dzwierzynski, who has a daughter in the first grade.
“With the No Child Left Behind Act,” she said,”any program that can effectively raise achievement should be embraced.”
