Language gap: Chapman classes threatened

Rhonda Pineda drives her two children down from Magalia each day to attend classes at Chapman Elementary School, where they are taught in both Spanish and English. Last week, she learned that the Chico Unified School District is considering modifying or even discontinuing the dual-immersion program there.

“I love the program,” Pineda said, and if it goes, so do her kids—to a Ridge school.

Alan Stephenson, the CUSD’s director of elementary education, said that while the program is popular enough at Parkview and Rosedale elementaries to merit a waiting list for English-speaking students, Chapman has the opposite situation. Several families with children in the upper grades have moved away since kindergarten, leaving a ratio that’s heavy on the native-Spanish-speaker side.

Stephenson told parents last week that the dual-immersion system was designed to operate with classes of 50-50 English and Spanish speakers, and the current setup isn’t working.

“You need to have the balance so they serve as role models for each other and talk to each other in those languages,” Stephenson said. “If we kept our balance, we’d have classes of six or seven kids, and we can’t afford that.”

But he said the main issue is educational, not financial, and he’s still not sure what the final decision will be. “We’re considering six steps, from ‘throw out the programs tomorrow’ to ‘leave this as it is,'” Stephenson said. “I’ve never been in a situation where I’m so up in the air. I absolutely love the program, but it’s having problems at Chapman school.”

Jill Quezada, whose sixth-grade son in is one of the six bilingual classrooms at Chapman, said the students are being penalized even though their grades never had the 50-50 ratio. “The model wasn’t being followed consistently before,” she said. “Now, [kindergarten] classes are coming in even.”

“I really feel like we’re being discriminated against,” said Rose Mary Marshall, whose sixth-grade daughter has grown up speaking both Spanish and English but is counted among the students who are considered native Spanish-speakers.

While most of the parents don’t want to transfer their children to Parkview or Rosedale, even if that becomes an option, Kelly Zeichick said she would move her kindergartener rather than lose the two-language environment. “It helps them academically. It opens a lot of doors and creates an appreciation of other cultures.”

Some of the parents hope to attend the Jan. 21 school board meeting and appeal to trustees.