But education experts say English immersion is not necessarily easy for students who aren't accustomed to it. Neither classroom stocked Spanish books on the shelves. Virtually no Spanish was written on the wall decorations. Reynaldo F. Macias, professor of education at UC Santa Barbara and director of the university's Linguistic Minority Research Institute, said the most pressing issue in Orange Unified is the district's lack of bilingual teachers to comply with the court order. At Fairhaven Elementary School in Santa Ana, one district school with an acute shortage, only three credentialed bilingual teachers remain from a faculty that had about a dozen the year before.
Kids are very resilient.