State Critical of Bilingual Programs : Newhall: Officials charge the district with denying Spanish-speaking students equal opportunities. The superintendent says an appeal may be filed.

California education authorities have accused the Newhall School District of violating state and federal regulations in educating Spanish-speaking students, alleging that the district provided unqualified teachers and inadequate materials at two of its six elementary schools.

In a report released earlier this week, a team of investigators from the state Department of Education concluded that instructors without credentials in either bilingual education or language development were improperly teaching students with limited English skills at Newhall and Peachland Avenue elementary schools.

The team also found that Spanish-speaking youngsters had fewer resources than their English-speaking counterparts, lacking textbooks, encyclopedias and even computer software in their native language, while such supplies were plentiful in English.

“These students thus are denied . . . an equal opportunity for academic achievement,” the report said.

The Newhall school board has until Sept. 15 to appeal the findings, but will probably decide the matter at its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, said Supt. J. Michael McGrath, who has been meeting with bilingual education staff and legal advisers to review the report and form a recommendation to the board.

“I am leaning, quite frankly, toward appealing,” McGrath said.

McGrath defended as sound Newhall and Peachland’s bilingual programs, which call for teaching students in Spanish in core academic subjects, such as science and math, while they increase their knowledge of English.

Although McGrath acknowledged that some pupils were being taught in their homeroom classes by instructors who lacked necessary bilingual education credentials, he said that the limited-English-proficiency, or LEP, students were pulled from their homerooms and taught in Spanish by properly certificated teachers.

“It’s not 100% of the day” that LEP students have bilingual teachers, McGrath said, adding that the district has had difficulty hiring such teachers. “It is obviously not a perfect program, but it’s not a perfect world. Within our resources we were doing what we felt we could do.”

He also disputed the investigators’ finding that the Newhall school library carried insufficient Spanish materials for its students, 45% of whom are Latino. “Insufficient compared to what?” he said.

The report is a blow to the 4,800-student district, which has been the subject of a number of similar federal investigations since 1986--largely at the insistence of three parents who also filed the complaints with the state Department of Education.

Last December, for the third time in five years, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights cleared the district of charges of racial bias, dismissing accusations that the district discriminated against some Latino students by segregating them from classmates until they learn English. The agency concluded that the district is “continuing to develop and implement an acceptable program” for LEP students.

The state probe was conducted during two visits by the investigators during the last school year. This week’s report supported four of the 23 allegations lodged by the parents, rejecting other accusations that the district misidentified LEP students, coerced parents to place their children in the bilingual program and indulged in unfair busing practices.

Cynthia Erickson, who with her husband helped file the state allegations, said she was happy with the report. She said she brought the complaints in the interest of the LEP students, whom she felt were being ill-prepared for junior high and high school.

Erickson said she objects to the bilingual program because of what she described as its segregationist aspects. But if it has to exist, it should be properly implemented, she said.

“This is all being paid with taxpayer money,” she said. “If they’re going to do . . . bilingual education, they should do it at its best.”

McGrath said if the district appealed, it would partly be because Newhall is being scrutinized more heavily than other districts.

“We feel we are being held to a higher standard than anyone else is being held to,” he said. “I guess we’re tired of being badgered.”