Parents set to meet Skipper Monday to demand better treatment for English learners
Hundreds signed petition: “We want full participation in decisions”
School Superintendent Mary Skipper is due to meet with parents of the St. Stephen’s Youth Programs Monday evening, after nearly 400 signed a petition demanding a voice in their children’s education and opposing Boston Public Schools policies for English learners.
“Today, although we often talk about collaboration and transparency, our experience is that important decisions about our students are made in secret and without true parental involvement,” the petition says.
BPS officials have announced plans to move children into classrooms where all instruction is in English, even if the children can’t understand English.
That decision led most members of the School Committee’s English Learner Task Force to resign in protest. “The evidence shows that building on the foundation of native language is the best way to learn academic English,” said John Mudd, one of the eight who resigned.
The resignations were widely reported by Boston area news media.
BPS officials said their decision was prompted by criticism from state and federal officials that they were isolating English learners from English-speaking children. They also said that, although all course content will be taught in English, students will be helped to learn English by English as a Second Language teachers.
Originally, officials said they would start next school year with kindergarten and grade 7. But after media coverage of the opposition, they delayed the change in grade 7 and said they would start just with kindergarten next year.
The parents’ petition is directed to the superintendent, mayor, School Committee, and Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary education.
The petition campaign was organized by St. Stephen’s Youth Program parents. The petition drive is headed up by Parent Organizing Coordinator Sugey Rondón Reyes. Boston School Committee Member Rafaela Polanco is the St. Stephen’s Director of Family Engagement, but organizers said that due to her role, she was not involved with the petition.
Does inclusion = immersion?
The BPS administration calls the new policy “inclusion,” a term that usually means educating children with disabilities in the same classes as children without disabilities — not educating children in classrooms where they can’t understand the teacher.
Members of the English Learner Task Force offered to help officials find ways to reduce isolation for English learners without ending native language instruction, but they said officials did not respond.
Parents ask for concrete details of the plan
The parents’ petition starts by demanding that BPS put off its plan until the 2025–2026 school year.
It calls for meetings at each affected school where parents can say what they want for their children and administration officials will explain what they propose, including what specifically the school day will look like.
The petition calls on BPS to take full advantage of the 2017 LOOK Act, which made it possible to restore native language programs that were severely limited under an earlier law.
The parents want BPS to convert “sheltered English immersion” programs into bilingual programs that use native language in addition to English. In sheltered English immersion, teachers speak only English but they use simplified language, visuals and sometimes limited amounts of native language to help non-English speakers understand.
To stop the isolation that state officials were concerned about, the parents propose that English learners be taught alongside English-speaking students in art, sports, and other programs for which instruction is not so heavily dependent on language.
The petition lists other specific demands and dates by which the parents expect them to be met.
Blackstone parent Simel Rodriguez, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, said bilingual education would help her eight-year-old American-born daughter communicate with her relatives on the family’s annual trips to the Dominican Republic. “We don’t want them to become silent children when they come to our country,” she said.
Title I funds
The petition also questions the use of federal Title I funds that are earmarked for the benefit of English learners. The parents want to be involved in the decisions about how that money is spent, including $30 million a year allocated from the central office.
“Historically, parents of EL students have been excluded from the decision-making process about how those central funds are used,” the petition says. “BPS year after year has failed to show which schools and which students benefit from that $30 million.”
“We make these requests in a spirit of partnership and collaboration,” the parents say.
They ask for an answer by January 16, a date that is long past.
According to organizer Sugey Rondón Reyes, Superintendent Mary Skipper was expected to come to a parent meeting February 13, but the meeting was canceled because of a predicted snow storm (the one that never materialized). It was rescheduled for March 25.
The BPS Press Office did not respond to a request for comment.
