BOSTON -- Voters said "adios" to the state's bilingual education law Tuesday, replacing it with a controversial initiative that mandates a one-year English immersion program.

Question 2 gives nonnative English speakers one year to learn English before they are moved into regular classes. Current law allows for up to three years.
"I would hope that a big victory in a state like Massachusetts would help galvanize this as a national issue," said California businessman Ron Unz, who funded the initiative and a similar question on Colorado's ballot.
 
The initiative requires students to be taught all classes in English. A teacher could use a student's native language only to help explain a complex theory. Students would then be tested in English.

It allows parents to sue teachers, administrators and school committee members personally for violating the law and teaching in a native language.
In recent years, voters in Arizona and California passed similar measures, also backed by Unz. No one has been sued so far, he said.

Lawmakers concerned about the ballot initiative this summer revamped bilingual education by giving schools more choices in programs, but with strict state oversight. The goal was two years and out, with a third year if necessary.
Currently, districts must provide a bilingual program for any 20 or more enrolled children of the same language who cannot do ordinary class work in English, or whose parents do not speak English. They are taught in both the native language and English; and taught the history of both the native land of the child's parents and the United States.

Republican Mitt Romany made English immersion a cornerstone of his gubernatorial campaign. Democrat Shannon O'Brien opposed it.
Statewide, 29,000 students are in bilingual education programs and another 11,000 take English-as-a-second-language courses.

Edward Rurak, a 78-year-old retiree from Haverhill, said he voted "for all-English." "I believe that when my parents came here from the old country they had to learn all English," said Rurak, whose family was from Poland. "I don't think we should cater."

But Jovita Fontanez, of Boston, said it's too strict. The native Puerto Rican learned to speak English while attending Boston schools in the mid-1950s, before the state created bilingual programs. Massachusetts was the first state to pass a bilingual education law 31 years ago.

"If I had English immersion in one year, I'd probably be out on Washington Street with a tin cup," Fontanez said, referring to a Boston thoroughfare.
Unz, a millionaire software entrepreneur, says bilingual education traps foreign-born students in programs that hold them back while classmates progress. Opponents said a "one size fits all" approach will backfire.

"Some kids -- they just don't learn as much if it's not broken down for them in such a way they can understand," said Jamie Landry, a 27-year-old state youth services worker who voted against the initiative.

 

Unz and his California-based English for the Children donated most of the $442,000 raised to support the question. The Committee for Fairness to Children and Teachers, which opposed the question, raised $200,000.
"Educating the voters about a very complex educational issue is not easy," said Daniel Navisky, spokesman for the opposition committee. "It's really difficult for people to understand what any ballot initiative is about."

In Lawrence, Mass., 19 percent of students are enrolled in bilingual programs, the highest percentage in the state, followed by Holyoke (17.8 percent), Somerville (17 percent), Boston (14.4 percent), Framingham (14 percent), Chelsea (13.5 percent), and Lowell (11 percent), according to state figures. More than 300 districts have no bilingual education programs.

Spanish is the most-spoken foreign language in bilingual education programs.
Opponents say the question will cost taxpayers about $125 million. Boston school officials last week estimated the switch to English immersion would cost $31 million in training and new textbooks over the next two years.
But Lincoln Tamayo, lead supporter of the question in Massachusetts, said it's as expensive to buy textbooks in other languages as it is to buy English-language materials.

"That's not an additional cost -- that's refocusing resources," said Tamayo, a former principal of Chelsea High School.

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