By Deepa SeetharamanThe Daily Northwestern

District 65 administrators are considering a proposal to update its Two-Way Immersion Program so more students outside a school’s attendance area can participate.

The 68-page proposal released Nov. 6 recommends the longterm placement of students in TWI classrooms by busing students from other attendance areas to TWI schools.

“Currently there is 100 percent neighborhood preference – slots are filled by all the kids in the attendance area,” said Jonathan Baum, school board president. Under the proposal, only 20 percent of slots for English-speaking students will be designated for children in the attendance area.

The plan is designed to introduce more diversity in the TWI classrooms. Critics such as Superintendent Hardy Murphy have said low numbers of black native English speakers have enrolled in the TWI program.

One reason for the proposal was to give “the administration greater flexibility for admissions to make TWI classrooms more reflective of Evanston,” Baum said.

The report also recommends developing six strands, or classrooms at each grade level, in six different elementary schools. That means maintaining a total of 36 new dual-language classrooms by 2009. There are currently 30 TWI classrooms in six elementary schools.

The school board will consider the proposal Nov. 20 at its scheduled board meeting.

“My sense of the board is we’re pretty much close to there,” Baum said. “The proposal, with some changes, is probably going to be enacted.”

One other major issue to be considered is whether the board approves freezing the number of schools with TWI strands, as recommended by the report. There are now seven kindergarten classrooms in seven different schools, serving almost 130 students. The report recommends the number of kindergarten classrooms be cut to six to consolidate classrooms and resources.

“We have one strand at Oakton Elementary School that doesn’t accommodate all the number of (limited English proficiency) students who live in the Oakton attendance area,” Baum said.

The board asked the administration to consider creating two strands of TWI at the school.

The big question is going to be “whether there should be a cap on the TWI program,” Baum said. “If there are English-speaking students who don’t get in, they don’t get in. If there are Spanish-speaking students who don’t get in, they’ll be put in an alternative bilingual program.”

The TWI program started in 2000 as a way to deliver bilingual instruction to the Evanston’s burgeoning Latino population, bringing native English speakers and Spanish-speaking students together to learn.

In kindergarten, the core curriculum instruction is 80 percent Spanish, and as students get older, the amount of English instruction they receive increases. Of the 600 students enrolled in TWI classrooms throughout Evanston, 46 percent are native English speakers and 54 percent are native Spanish speakers.

There are dual-language classrooms at Dawes, Dewey, Oakton, Walker, Washington and Willard elementary schools.

Native Spanish speakers are automatically enrolled in the program, but there is a long waiting list for native English speakers. TWI teachers have advocated the creation of a language academy that would house TWI-only classrooms, a suggestion the administration has put on hold due to resource limitations.

“A language academy just can’t happen,” Baum said. “It would be something to explore.”

Reach Deepa Seetharaman at [email protected].