Letter from California Latinos and other Language Minority Groups Protesting Policies of the Democratic Party Controlled State Department of Education and the Democratic Governor Davis Administration
November 6, 2000
Monica Lozano, President
California State Board of Education
721 Capitol Mall, Room 558
Sacramento, CA 95814
Re: Recent State Board of Education Actions Against Latino, Asian and Language Minority Students.
Dear Ms. Lozano:
We are writing to you as individuals and/or on behalf of organizations who work in various capacities to serve the needs of Latino, Asian and immigrant communities throughout California. Specifically we are writing to express our concerns about the failure of the State Board of Education to affirmatively address issues of educational equity with respect to language minority and immigrant students enrolled in California schools. In particular, we are very concerned about recent efforts to undermine the rights guaranteed under federal and state law concerning the state's 1.4 million limited English proficient (LEP) student population. It is the purpose of this letter to outline some of our immediate concerns and to request a meeting with you in the very near future so that we may discuss these issues face to face.
A letter was forwarded to the Governor on April 22, 1999, expressing our concerns regarding the make-up of the Board under the Wilson Administration and requesting to meet with him. Governor Davis never responded to that letter. Subsequently all efforts to offer candidates and to persuade his Administration to appoint Board members who are knowledgeable about the needs of Latino, Asian, language minority and immigrant students have also been largely ignored. Efforts by various individuals and organizations to offer amendments to the Governor's "education reform" legislation so that it would be more responsive to the needs of language minority and immigrant children were also largely rejected by his Administration. His re-appointment of a former Wilson appointee and of an individual who filed a declaration in favor of Prop. 227 in federal litigation, coupled with his rejection of Latino candidates who were clearly more qualified to sit on the Board than those he appointed, raises serious concerns for our communities.
We are writing to you as Board president and as one of the few Board members who we believe possesses some knowledge concerning the needs of Latino, Asian, and immigrant students and who is willing to listen to community concerns.
Below is a summary of our immediate concerns:
A. Efforts to Undermine Monitoring and Compliance Concerning LEP Student Rights
We are informed that the California Department of Education (CDE), with Board staff, is conducting an internal review related to monitoring, technical assistance, intervention and consolidated applications, and that the CDE has been charged with presenting related recommendations to the Board at its December meeting. As part of this process a Board staff member circulated a memo to the Board regarding these issues. (See attached memo re: Compliance reviews and consolidated applications.) This memo focuses on the status of certain compliance agreements entered into between the CDE and school districts found to have violated state and federal laws concerning LEP student rights. In this memo the following conclusions are asserted without any legal or statutory reference:
- that the compliance agreements contain non-compliance items from previous years which are no longer relevant;
- that it is inappropriate for compliance agreements to require districts to align training, recruitment and hiring practices to increase the number of bilingual teachers;
- that these compliance agreements place too much emphasis on the importance of using the state's ELD standards; and,
- that the compliance agreements should place much more emphasis on STAR and API data, in lieu of other more meaningful LEP assessment data.
- the provisions of Prop. 227 and applicable regulations;
- residual state law which the Board readily argued in Court was consistent with Prop. 227 and stressed was still applicable law; and,
- federal statutes, regulations and case law governing LEP student educational rights.
B. The Failure of the Board to Ensure that School Districts Comply with the Law
The state, through the State Board, "bears the ultimate authority and responsibility to ensure that its district-based system of common schools provide basic equality of educational opportunity." Butt v. State of California (1992) 4 Cal.4th 668, 681. Further, under federal law, the State Board has an affirmative obligation to establish minimum standards and guidelines for the implementation of programs to meet the language needs of a state's LEP student population and to monitor and enforcethe implementation of those standards at the school site level. Idaho Migrant Council v. Board of Education, 647 F.2d 69 (9th Cir. 1981); Gomez v. Illinois State Bd. of Educ., 811 F.2d 1030 (7th Cir. 1987); U.S. v. Texas, 680 F.2d 356 (5th Cir. 1982); Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA) 20 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq.
Given these critical obligations, the Board should focus on ways to ensure that state and federal laws addressing the language needs of LEP students are actually monitored and enforced. As the Board's head, we are concerned that you are fully aware of the status of compliance monitoring by the CDE. In our view the CDE's ability to carry out its responsibility in this regard has substantially eroded over the last several years until it has now reached a critical stage:
In its recent audit report concerning CDE's monitoring of state and federal programs the Bureau of State Audits concludes that the CDE's "philosophy and approach toward monitoring entities receiving state and federal funds do not allow it to adequately determine whether these funds are spent properly. The approach places little emphasis on ensuring accountability of those receiving funds, or on the planning and evaluation of the department's own monitoring activities. There is little assurance that the department uses its resources efficiently to monitor these organizations and that its efforts provide maximum value. As a result, the department cannot ensure that recipients appropriately use funds to meet the needs of eligible children."
In another report by the State Auditor concerning the CDE's management of the federal adult education program, it concludes that CDE's "monitoring efforts failed to detect unsubstantiated claims for adult education funds . . . In addition, the department's award process yielded inconsistent decisions that leave it open to charges of favoritism. The department is making significant changes to the adult education program. However, the changes may not resolve past problems and could result in a drop in the number of students served."
The U.S. Department of Education has also documented CDE's failure to carry out its monitoring obligations. "[T]he Office of Special Education Programs is deeply concerned about continuing noncompliance, most notably the California Department of Education's continuing failure to exercise its general supervisory responsibility over local school districts in the State, including ensuring that local school districts correct identified deficiencies in a timely manner. As a result of this failure by the California Department of Education, serious deficiencies have been allowed to exist for a number of years, impacting services for children with disabilities."
Latino, Asian, language minority and immigrant children are all adversely impacted by CDE's failure to properly monitor and, thus, to ensure that programs meant to address their needs are in fact implemented at the school site level. Therefore, it was especially disturbing that in direct non- compliance with the terms of the Comité v. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Consent Decree, the CDE unilaterally canceled approximately eighty (80) Coordinated Compliance Reviews (CCRs) during the 1998-99 school year and failed to conduct four (4) of the ten (10) critical Comitéfollow-up reviews mandated by the Consent Decree. In a recent letter from the U.S. Department of Education concerning the CDE's failure to properly monitor federal special education laws, it concludes that "on-site monitoring is one of the best ways to ensure compliance--that children are receiving the services they need." We agree with that conclusion and are concerned that the CCRs referred to above were unilaterally canceled. CCRs, when properly conducted, ensure that LEP students are: 1) properly identified and assessed; 2) given access to the curriculum; 3) provided appropriate programs to teach them academic English; 4) formally reclassified; 5) given access to qualified teachers; and that their parents are: 1) given adequate notice concerning their child's placement; 2) given access to the parental exception waiver process; and, 3) given an opportunity to participate in immigrant parent advisory committees. It is our firm belief, a belief confirmed by both the State Auditor and the U.S. Department of Education, that the CDE's monitoring and enforcement processes are profoundly lacking and that aggressive efforts must be undertaken to address this crisis.
C. The Failure of the Board to Sanction Districts in Gross Non-Compliance with the Law
Further evidence of CDE's lax approach to monitoring and enforcement is found in the list of school districts which have been allowed to remain in non-compliance with state and federal laws for several consecutive years. This list is attached for your review and lists some forty (40) districts. Some of these districts (Oakland Unified, West Contra Costa, Riverside Unified, Grant Joint Union, San Diego Unified, South San Francisco, Lake Elsinore, Inglewood Unified, Compton Unified, Sacramento City, Ravenswood City, East Side Union High School) have remained in non-compliance for over five years! When asked to produce written evidence that efforts were undertaken to recommend that sanctions be brought against these districts, none was produced. We believe that it is inconsistent for the Board to expend exceptional resources to sue school districts such as San Francisco Unified which is attempting to provide meaningful assessments for its LEP children and yet allow other school districts to escape meaningful review.
D. The Failure of the Board to Adopt Adequate Regulations to Ensure that LEP Students are Properly Redesignated
We have reviewed recently proposed regulations concerning the redesignation of LEP students. We conclude that they are inadequate and provide little guidance to ensure that LEP students will be properly and uniformly reclassified statewide. Regulations should ensure that once reclassified, these students will be able to participate effectively in a curriculum designed for pupils of the same age whose native language is English. As currently written, these regulations invite abuse and do nothing to prevent students from being prematurely redesignated.
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Above are just a few of the issues of concern to us with respect to Latino, Asian, immigrant and language minority students. As you know, at least fifty percent of all students enrolled in California's schools are Latino or Asian. Fifty percent of all Latino students are identified as LEP. Unfortunately, it has been verified by countless reports and studies at both the state and national level that our school system is failing Latino, immigrant and language minority children.
We propose that this meeting take place in Los Angeles or Sacramento with 10 to 15 representatives of the signatories below. Given the agenda for the December Board meeting, we feel it would be most useful to meet before then. Either Deborah Escobedo (415-546-6382) or Martha Zaragoza-Diaz (916-441-4640) will call your office in the very near future to see if we can confirm a date.
We thank you for giving this your serious consideration.
Lucy Acosta
California Latino Civil Rights Network
Ramon P. Arias, Executive Director
Bay Area Legal Aid**
Ismael Avilez
Coalición Unidos por la Educación de Nuestros Niños (Oceanside)
Luz Buitrago, Director
Center On Poverty Law and Economic Opportunity**
Gina Castillo
La Alianza por los Derechos de los Inmigrantes
Victor Chavez
Izcalli School
Edward Chen
Civil Rights Lawyer
Diane Chin, Executive Director
Chinese for Affirmative Action
Angie Choi
SFUSD School Health Programs Department**
Roberto de la Rosa, Executive Director
OLA Raza (Central Valley)
Martha Zaragoza-Diaz, Education Advocate
Zaragoza-Diaz & Associates
Richard Esquivel
JFK MECHA Parents Advisory Committee (Sacramento)
Augustine Gallego
Chancellor, San Diego Community Colleges
John Gamboa
The Greenlining Institute
Viola Gonzales, Executive Director
Latino Issues Forum(Statewide)
Elizabeth E. Guillen, Legislative Counsel
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Mary Hernandez
President, Board of Education, San Francisco Unified School District**
Past President, Hispanic National Bar Association**
Christopher Ho
Language Rights Attorney
Dolores Huerta
Co-Founder and President Emeritus
United Farm Workers of America
Anamaria Loya, Executive Director
La Raza Centro Legal (San Francisco Bay Area)
Julio Mateo, President
San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Association
Gabriel Medel, Executive Director
Parents for Unity (Los Angeles)
Jill Kerper Mora, Ed.D.
Associate Professor of Teacher Education
San Diego State University**
Anaida Colon-Muniz, President
California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE)
Carlos Munoz,
Ruben J. Rosalez
Comité Pro Educación (Pittsburg)
Luis Natividad, Founder
Latino, Latina and Indigenous Unity Coalition
Clara Luz Navarro
Mujeres Unidas y Activas (Bay Area)
Alberto Ochoa
Rosalia Salinas
San Diego County Latino Coalition on Education
Jose R. Padilla, Executive Director
California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc.**
Larry Perales
Californians Together
Amagda Perez, Executive Director
California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation
David Ramirez, Director
Center for Language Minority Education and Research
Mario Salgado
Vanguard Public Foundation
Lori Santos, President
National Coalition for Better Education (Sacramento)
Maria Nieto-Senour
SDSU Faculty and Trustee
San Diego Community Colleges
Gary Soto, Poet/Writer
Professor, University of California, Riverside**
Juan Uranga, Executive Director
Center for Community Advocacy**
Raymond Uzeta, President
Chicano Federation, Inc.
Cristina Valdez
Cross Cultural Environmental Leadership Program (XCEL)
David Valladolid
Chicano Federation Board of Directors
Teresa Pascual Valladolid, Trustee
Southwestern Community College
Respectfully on behalf of the above-named individuals,
Deborah Escobedo, Attorney
Multicultural Education, Training & Advocacy (META) Inc.
785 Market Street, Suite 420
San Francisco, CA 94103
Phone (415) 546-6382
Fax: (415) 546--6363
cc:
- Cruz M. Bustamante, Lieutenant Governor
- Delaine Eastin, State Superintendent of Public Instruction
- John Burton, Senate pro Tempore
- Robert M. Hertzberg, Speaker of the Assembly
- Latino Legislative Caucus
**The views expressed in this letter are the personal views of the individuals and not the organization. Organization affiliation included for identification purposes only.
