U-46 parents want aides back at Channing

More than 80 Channing Elementary School students and their parents, many holding homemade signs, packed the Elgin Area School District U-46 board room Monday to oppose a recent decision removing a majority of teacher aides from the school's dual language classrooms.

The decision, community members believe, is already hurting the site-specific program that splits a select group of students' school days and subjects between Spanish and English.

"This isn't a research-based decision; it's a budget-based one," said Kristen Webb of Elgin, whose son is a second-grade dual language student.

"Pulling our aides is opening the door for (the district) to keep taking from this successful program."

With 72 percent of students coming from low-income homes, and nearly 85 percent identified as minorities, the majority of Channing students have been labeled "at risk" of educational failure.

About 230 of the school's 615 students are participating in the program this year.

High test scores from dual language students helped bump Channing off the state's academic warning list in 2005. It has not returned since.

The percentage of students, according to 2007 state report cards, making "adequate yearly progress" at Channing in reading is 66.3 percent; in math, 76.6 percent; both well above the No Child Left Behind benchmark of 55 percent.

One of the school's former aides, who asked not to be identified, said that on July 18 - less than a week before the continuous learning calendar school was set to start for the year - she received a message on her answering machine telling her not to report back to work. More than three weeks after contacting school administrators to find out why she was let go, she has still not received a return phone call.

The decision to remove aides, Assistant Superintendent for Administrative Services Lalo Ponce said, was made shortly before the start of the school year.

"As we were looking through our budget processes and staffing reviews, we saw that this did not meet the standard of a 27-to-1 student-teacher ratio for bilingual programs," he said.

Channing's dual language program has featured full-time para educators, or aides, in its 25-student classrooms since the program's inception eight years ago.

Students spend the day moving between two classrooms, learning math, science, reading and social science alternately in English and Spanish.

Dual language aides help students individually with pronunciation and in-class assignments, and help teachers with the burden of collecting and assigning tests, homework and projects for up to 50 students at a time.

Sophia Peterson, a cast-clad Channing first-grader, told the board in both English and Spanish, "Mr. Cortez was our helper teacher and now his job is gone. He helped us with many things - with math and with the birthday parties. I miss (him) every day."

Michael Warren of Elgin, chastised the board for not including school staff and parents in the decision process to remove the aides."I know we could have prepared and staffed the rooms with parent volunteers or something not to jeopardize the success of the program," he said.

Jamie Cisco said her son Benjamin, a first-grader who participated in the program as a kindergartner, is already coming home with less homework than last year.

"Bottom line is, I'm protecting my cub," the Streamwood resident said. "We made a decision to enroll our kids in this school - to drive seven miles each way - just for this program. I won't see it dismantled."

On the heels of last week's decision by a federal judge to grant class-action status to the three-year-old racial bias lawsuit filed against the district, parents charge that the cuts at Channing are indicative of a larger, more disturbing trend.

"The district has lost track of its stakeholders," Webb said. "They're just not listening anymore."

Parents also expressed hope that new Superintendent Jose Torres will take an active role in finding a remedy for the situation.

In a Monday letter addressed to dual language parents, Torres said he wanted "to state how much I regret that we are in the midst of this controversy. We should have explained to parents, teachers and principal what we intended to do before the school year and in writing with a full explanation of our decision and process."

"He's got to change the culture (in U-46)," Warren said.

Torres said he has established a dual language committee to study the benefits of the program being expanded at other schools throughout the district. The 16-member committee, composed of parents, district staff, several bilingual teachers, dual language teachers, a union representative and an English Language Learners program director, will meet for the first time Sept. 9.