The elementary school district will allow non-bilingual educators to teach at the Hollister Dual Language Academy.
District trustees voted 3-2 in favor of the move at the regularly scheduled school board meeting last Tuesday.
As the academy grew into a full, K-7 program one class at a time over seven years, staffing it only with teachers certified to teach in Spanish and English with “Bilingual Crosscultural Language and Academic Development” certificates became difficult. It sometimes created situations where instructors were taken from other sites that would have benefited from their bilingual expertise, according to a report with the meeting agenda.
“My only concern is it may water down the program,” said Trustee Elsa Rodriguez. “I think it’s important to have BCLAD teachers.”
Rodriguez and Trustee Ben Flores cast the dissenting votes.
“Opening up the potential pool (of candidates) by not requiring the BCLAD allows us to hire – if we find them – monolingual teachers,” said Principal Monique Ruiz in an interview after the decision. “It’s not necessarily that we won’t hire BCLAD teachers, but it allows us the flexibility.”
At the academy, students work with two teachers, speaking English with one and Spanish with the other. Since the program started, though, all teachers at the site have had BCLAD certificates, allowing them to teach in both languages.
A former BCLAD teacher at the Tuesday meeting spoke in favor of opening the program to more teachers.
“I think we open up the possibility to some really wonderful teachers to also be part of the program,” said Lonna Martinez.
She is the district’s director of educational services and a former BCLAD teacher who team-taught with a colleague who was not bilingual prior to joining the district office. Martinez praised her colleague as “absolutely one of the most fabulous teachers I’ve ever taught with.”
Exactly how the instructors team up would be determined by the school’s principal, but each team of instructors would have to have at least one BCLAD teacher who could teach in Spanish.
“I hear what you guys are saying, but my concern is we many not always have Monique there. She’s not going to be there forever,” said Trustee Ben Flores. “We always run into the possibility of things breaking down from what we started.”
There will be four of five staff positions opening at the school site next year, according to the Assistant Superintendent Dennis Kurtz, who is also the director of human resources.
“We don’t want to lose any of our BCLAD teachers but as we grow in demand … we will need more and more teachers so we wanted the flexibility to be able to hire teachers for the English model- if we found the right fit,” Ruiz said.
