This is significant enough to have a discussion on how to better respond to the community's needs. We have to provide choices that meet the diversity in our district. But proponents of Prop. 227 say any such action would defy the will of the voters. PLF, which thus far has succeeded in defending the initiative in a separate court case, sought to intervene in a new lawsuit recently filed by the California Teachers Association and other groups who are challenging a section of Proposition 227 that gives parents and guardians a private right of action to enforce the measure. Alphabet charts lining the classroom walls remind students that A is for amigo, B for bueno, and C for casa.
Kids take turns reading aloud from essays they've written in their native Spanish.
Despite the broken heating system, Allen's classroom is warm and lively. But the emphasis on Spanish seems a far cry from what California voters had in mind last June when they resoundingly passed Proposition 227, a controversial initiative intended to end bilingual education. But Prop. 227 hasn't been the death knell that both fans and foes predicted. Many students are learning far more in English than in the past. But tens of thousands of others, like Allen's pupils, still study reading, writing, math, and science in Spanish, the native language of 80 percent of California's 1.4 million schoolchildren with limited English skills.