Update on the Alvarado / Flynn enrollment SNAFU
When I first heard about the dual-immersion enrollment debacle at Alvarado and Flynn, I thought it was a fairly private matter that mostly affected the handful of families in each incoming Kindergarten class. Now that word of the problem has spread, it has become a public issue with potentially far reaching impact on the enrollment issue going forward.
In that spirit, I contacted the district to get their response and received the following publicly released memo that I'm sharing with you:
Leonard R. Flynn & Alvarado Elementary
Two-Way Spanish Immersion Re-Assignment
OPTIONS FOR RE-ASSIGNED FAMILIES
Kudos to the district for providing this response. Reading through it I am struck that they have made a terrible but very human mistake and are now struggling t do the right thing. The bottom line about what the district is doing now is found in this response:
In that spirit, I contacted the district to get their response and received the following publicly released memo that I'm sharing with you:
Leonard R. Flynn & Alvarado Elementary
Two-Way Spanish Immersion Re-Assignment
OPTIONS FOR RE-ASSIGNED FAMILIES
Kudos to the district for providing this response. Reading through it I am struck that they have made a terrible but very human mistake and are now struggling t do the right thing. The bottom line about what the district is doing now is found in this response:
What did the district do once it realized the coding error?Having just endured a weekend of flying the crowded skies, I am struck by the analogy to airlines booking errors. The airlines freuquently overbook their flights and have to secure the cooperation of flyers to resolve their mistakes. They do this using incentives like cash rewards and flight discounts. I wonder if there is something the district could offer to the affected families -- maybe a priority placement guarantee for any family that volunteers to move their child? Move to a balanced program now and be guaranteed a middle school placement later? Maybe even commit to opening more middle school classrooms for graduates of dual-imersion programs? Just an idea...
As a result of this error, the district was faced with tough choices. Officials decided that it was best to assure access to the non-English speaking families who were not given their higher choice due to the coding error, and to uphold the integrity of the Two-Way Immersion model, by re-assigning some of the English speaking families.
Several different options were considered and discussed at length with district staff, including teachers and principals at Flynn and Alvarado. One staff member called native English speaking families affected by the error to inform of the imbalances and asked these families if they would consider a re-assignment to the general education class at the same site. Through multiple phone calls, all families who were reached indicated that they preferred to remain assigned to Two-Way Immersion even though there was an imbalance of English Home Language Speakers.
The main options that were discussed included:
- Create a “bubble class.” This option was seriously considered but numerous factors (facilities, capacity, program implementation and quality issues) were major barriers.
- Add a team teacher to each Immersion class and expand enrollment. Numerous factors (physical classroom size, capacity, program implementation and quality issues) were reasons why this option was eliminated.
- Change the program from a Two-Way Immersion class to a Total Immersion class. This option would have been unfair to the Spanish speaking families who requested the program because Total Immersion is designed for non-native speakers whereas two-way Immersion is designed to include both native and non-native speakers.
- Create a new Dual-Immersion Program at a nearby location that can accommodate space and programming needs. This is one of the options currently being pursued.
Labels: Enrollment
7 Comments:
I think the district's first priority in this case needs to be NOT to reassign any students. The blow to the integrity and the credibility of the assignment process could have years of negative impact. I know the other options are extremely problematic, but in my opinion SFUSD needs to find a way to make those other options work.
What a crazy and horrible situation. I do think the equity issue for Spanish speaking families very much needed to be addressed as a priority but not at the cost of ousting innocent families right before the fall session. It appears to me that the teachers involved stonewalled the district and basically left them very little room to maneuver. I sympathize with the teachers and understand their reasoning but Caroline is right, the loss of credibility to the assignment system and the district is huge.
I am genuinely not sure that once the bubble class idea was rejected, there was any other option beyond re-assigning families at this late date.
What I absolutely cannot forgive is how long it took them to deal with the error - Flynn teachers raised a flag as early as March, but it took EPC almost two months to even start investigating. Then, once they started investigating in early June, it took them almost six weeks before they seriously started talking solutions. By then, it was too late to do much else than re-assign families, particularly because the Flynn teachers and parents drew a line in the sand and said they absolutely would not accept yet another year of an imbalanced classroom and secondary treatment of Spanish-speakers.
Some of the rhetoric around the English- vs. Spanish-speakers has been very divisive but the fact remains that the Spanish-speakers have been and would have again been seriously affected by imbalanced immersion classrooms. So I do think the Flynn teachers and parents did an admirable thing by standing up for their program.
If this group had been listened to early on, many of the 23 families could have been placed long before now. But I agree with Caroline that the integrity of the enrollment process has taken a major hit -- and it didn't have much trust to begin with.
I think there are four things we should do NOW to salvage the 2009-10 enrollment season while we are working on a complete overhaul of the system for future years (which the Board and Garcia have already promised):
1)Scrap the diversity index for 2009-10 and announce that children will be assigned by straight lottery (with the addition of home language as a factor for those applying to two-way immersion programs);
2)Pledge to resume language testing for spanish-speakers requesting placement in immersion programs and ensure that EPC counselors are trained to support families' choices, not push them towards or away from immersion;
3)Invite independent observers from PPS, SF-AME and other organizations (Coleman?) to audit the placement of children in immersion programs and pledge to hand-check each of these placements before assignments are finalized.
4)Send Garcia on a barnstorming tour to talk to prospective parents about these changes and to offer his personal guarantee that a debacle like this will never happen again.
I'm holding out for reinstating the bubble class idea, at least at one of the schools. Meanwhile, reverse the summary reassignment and offer every possible attractive option to the 23 (yes, I know that's unfair to everyone else), as a VOLUNTARY choice.
Just my opinion, but I'm stubbornly sticking to my view that revoking assignments is an absolutely unacceptable option unless the school burns down.
What happens if all the spaces opened up by these 23 families are not taken by the Spanish speaking families?
Has the district confirmed they have 23 Sp speaking families who want to come to these two schools?
It would be reasonable to assume so but given what has happened, one should not assume anything.
So lets say 5 spaces are still left -- are the 5 spaces filled randomly from the 23 families?
8:43 said: So lets say 5 spaces are still left -- are the 5 spaces filled randomly from the 23 families?
No. The issue here is balance of English- to Spanish-speakers. My understanding is that the research says the ideal balance for a two-way immersion program is 33% English, 33% bilingual, 33% Spanish. But it has proved very difficult to find children who are bilingual, so the district relaxed the model to 50% dominant English and 50% dominant Spanish. The Flynn and Alvarado classes this year, because of the mistake, were like 20% Spanish and 80% English, which compromised the integrity of the program. Because the Flynn teachers (and I'm assuming the Alvarado teachers as well) drew a line in the sand and said the model was ineffective with less than a 50-50 balance, it would be untenable to after all that re-assign English speakers to the classrooms because that would throw the balance off again.
I am sympathetic to the families being reassigned, but we are one of several families still in waitpools for a Spanish Immersion program, having received NONE of our choices in Rounds 1 or 2, even after listing all 7 of the Sp. Immersion programs. Is it fair that the reassigned families get preference over families like ours?
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