Prop. 227 Got Few Latino Votes Early polls had claimed more minority support Ramon G. McLeod, Maria Alicia Gaura, Chronicle Staff Writers Friday, June 5, 1998 ©1998 San Francisco Chronicle URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/06/05 /MN101615.DTL Contrary to public opinion polls that had shown Latinos in favor of Proposition 227, precinct results and statewide election exit polls show that Latinos voted heavily against the bans on bilingual education. Backers of Proposition 227, which won with a commanding 61 percent of the votes on Tuesday, had pointed with some pride to what appeared to be support for the measure that cut across racial lines. But although whites and Asian Americans largely supported it, most African Americans and Latinos -- the biggest non-English speaking group in California -- resoundingly voted ``no.'' Latino support, which some polls found to be as high as 61 percent two months ago, had evaporated by election day, according to exit polls conducted by CNN and the Los Angeles Times. ``I think what happened was that people finally understood that this was about doing away with bilingual education, not correcting it,'' said Ortencia Lopez, executive director of El Concilio of San Mateo, an umbrella organization for Latino nonprofit groups. ``Many of us agree that bilingual education needs fixing, but this goes far beyond that.'' In the 1990 Census, at least one third of Latinos reported that they did not speak English very well or at all, and demographers believe those rates probably are about the same today. Asian Americans tend to be more proficient in English, with only about a quarter reporting poor English skills. Also, although exit polls showed that 57 percent of Asian American voters approved the measure, in places where non-English-speaking Asian Americans are highly concentrated, they too rejected 227. Exit polls in San Francisco showed that 74 percent of Asian Americans voted against the measure, similar to San Jose precincts with large, non-English-speaking Asian American populations. ``I think you can say pretty clearly that groups that were most directly affected by this were very much against it, both Latinos and, here in the city, Asians,'' said Tom Hsieh Jr., a pollster who conducted Tuesday's exit polls of San Francisco's Asian American voters. Ron Unz, the millionaire Silicon Valley businessman who authored the measure, said that these kinds of exit polls are unreliable indicators. ``I think you need to be very, very skeptical about these kinds of polls,'' he said. ``First of all, you are polling only people willing to stop and talk, and there may have been some peer pressure on them to say what they thought needed to be said. ``If you took a poll at the public forums we did, you would have thought only 5 percent were in favor of 227.'' Harry Patron, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a Southern California think tank that studies Latino issues, agreed with Unz about flaws in polling, but for a very different reason. ``We think the polls have basic problems when it comes to Latinos,'' Patron said. ``It happened with Propositions 187 and 209 too.'' Patron said there are three reasons why pollsters seem to misinterpret Latino voting trends. ``First, even though Latinos comprise one of every three or four state residents, they make up only 13 to 14 percent of the voting pool,'' Patron said. As a result, polls include few Latinos, and the margin of error is large. Also, many Latino voters are predominantly Spanish-speaking, and Patron thinks pollsters are ill- equipped with bilingual staff. ``I suspect that they are overwhelmed with the Spanish speakers and so seek out the English- speaking Latino voters,'' Patron said.'' Furthermore, Patron said that working class and poor Latinos tend to ignore elections until the last weeks of the campaign and then rely heavily on the influence of opinion-makers when deciding how to vote. ``You see a tremendous fluidity in the two weeks preceding an election,'' Patron said. ``They take their cues from political leaders, and those cues are often not forthcoming until the end. ``Those factors contribute to the discrepancy between polling and voting, which we as an institute have been trying to point out for years.'' ©1998 San Francisco Chronicle Page A19 ===================================== Published Thursday, June 4, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News Rights groups sue to block Prop. 227 S.J. Unified to seek waiver from Prop. 227 BY MICHAEL BAZELEY Mercury News Staff Writer Just hours after voters overwhelmingly supported a measure to end bilingual education, civil rights groups launched their counterattack Wednesday, appealing to the courts to help schools keep their special language programs. The Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, along with a half-dozen other civil rights groups, filed a class-action federal lawsuit alleging that Proposition 227 violates the civil rights of non-English speaking children by requiring them all to be taught in English. The groups said they would seek an injunction this week to prevent the initiative from taking effect in 60 days, as the law now requires. At the same time, several school districts --including San Jose Unified -- confirmed they planned to ask the State Board of Education next month for waivers from all the provisions of the initiative. ``We are seeking an exemption from the Education Code,'' said Berkeley Unified School District Superintendent Jack McLaughlin. ``We want to protect our valuable programs.'' Proposition 227 passed handily at the polls Tuesday, garnering 60 percent of the 5.3 million votes cast. The ballot measure, conceived by Silicon Valley businessman Ron Unz, requires nearly all public school instruction to be in English, except where parents ask for waivers. The 1.4 million school children who speak little or no English would spend a year in an intensive English program and then make the transition into regular classrooms. Districts have 60 days to implement the new policy. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, was brought on behalf of eight children represented by their parents, the American Civil Liberties Union, Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Asian Law Caucus, Employment Law Center and Public Advocates Inc. ``Proposition 227 will take us back 25 years to when students were denied an equal access to education,'' said Theodore Wang, an attorney with Chinese for Affirmative Action. ``The result is that they will be further isolated from those who participate fully in the educational system. Proposition 227 silences and deafens the children who do not speak English.'' Cite laws on access, rights In their suit, the plaintiffs allege that the initiative violates the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, among other laws. None of those laws require schools to teach children in their home language. But they are designed to prevent schools and states from denying equal educational and political access to minorities and students with limited English skills. The Equal Educational Opportunities Act, for example, orders schools ``to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its students in its instruction programs.'' The suit argues that by banning bilingual instruction and creating an ``untested'' English immersion program, Proposition 227 prevents schools from meeting the needs of students who might require instruction in their home language to compete academically. Proposition 227 includes provisions allowing parents to ask for bilingual instruction under certain circumstances. But critics said the waiver process is so restrictive and confusing that it effectively prevents many parents from getting what they want for their children. ``These parents already face great obstacles to getting involved in our educational system,'' said Deborah Escobedo of Multicultural Education, Training and Advocacy. ``To suggest that immigrant parents can pop into school to avail themselves of a waiver process that is so complicated even the lawyers in this room can't understand it. . . . No, there is no choice.'' The groups also argue that the ballot measure conflicts with the equal protection guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by making it harder for minorities to take advantage of the political process. ACLU attorney Ed Chen said Proposition 227 undermines minority parents' political power because it makes it difficult for them to petition school boards for bilingual education programs. ``To single out minorities is a distortion of the political process,'' Chen said. Suing Wilson, schools chief The defendants in the suit are Gov. Pete Wilson, the State Board of Education and state schools chief Delaine Eastin. The state Attorney General's Office will be called upon to defend the suit. Unz said a group of unidentified lawyers in Los Angeles was prepared to help to defend the initiative. ``We certainly have expected the legal challenge,'' Unz said. ``But I do not think they have a legal leg to stand on.'' Wilson's office did not return calls seeking comment. Eastin's office said the state superintendent intends to ``uphold the will of the people'' until a court orders otherwise. In the meantime, Eastin will be sending school districts guidance on how to comply with the initiative, spokesman Doug Stone said. Several districts, though, have already decided to try to get around the English-only guidelines. In addition to Berkeley, educators in San Jose, Oakland and possibly San Francisco plan to ask the State Board of Education for waivers from Proposition 227 at its July meeting. The San Jose board has scheduled a June 29 meeting to solicit public comment on that plan. ``We're not going to implement it just because it's law,'' said board President Rich Garcia. ``Our main concern is how to keep kids from suffering in a program that is not suited for them.'' San Jose school officials already are under federal court order to provide bilingual services for Spanish speaking students, which may offer them another exemption from Proposition 227. The likelihood of the waiver requests succeeding is uncertain, though. Rae Belisle, the attorney for the state board, said she doubted it could waive the provisions of Proposition 227 because the board gets its authority from the state Legislature. Lawmakers would have to first express an interest in modifying the initiative, she said. Even if they did, any changes to the initiative would have to maintain its original intent. Profiling initiative's supporters Meanwhile, a picture of who supported the initiative began to emerge Wednesday. According to a CNN-Los Angeles Times exit poll, 67 percent of white voters supported the measure, 57 percent of Asians voted for it and 48 percent of black voters supported it. Among Latino voters, who were closely watched throughout the campaign, just 37 percent voted yes. Unz had said repeatedly that he wanted to do well among Latino voters so that his initiative would not be viewed as racially divisive. He disputed the exit poll's numbers, noting that statewide public opinion polls had pegged Latino support closer to 50 or 60 percent. Mercury News Staff Writer Lori Aratani contributed to this report ============================================= Published Sunday, May 31, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News Why a left-of-left liberal wants children educated in English BY ALICE CALLAGHAN I AM AN UNREPENTANT left-of-left Democrat. I've spent time in jail protesting the treatment of farmworkers, the deportation of Salvadoran refugees and the mistreatment of skid row's homeless. Supporting Proposition 227 is the first politically incorrect thing I have been known to do. As founder and director of Las Familias del Pueblo, I oversee a one-room community center on the edge of Los Angeles' skid row and the start of the garment district's sweatshops. All of our families work hard. Most labor in garment district sweatshops. Others wait on tables, clean downtown offices or sell tamales on street corners. All struggle to house and feed their children on average monthly incomes of $800. Living in cramped one-room apartments, everything they need is something they can't afford. Yet it was these impoverished sweatshop workers who courageously set in motion a revolution in California. In February 1996, after years of begging Ninth Street Elementary School to teach their children -- many of whom were born in this country -- to read and write English, these sweatshop workers pulled their children out of school and began a boycott. The boycott lasted nearly two weeks and led to Proposition 227 on this June's ballot. It will eliminate most bilingual programs in California. The Ninth Street parent boycott was initiated because the school refused to create English-language classes for students requesting them -- even though California law required the school to do so. Students continued to have Spanish-language classes through elementary school and were sent to middle school barely reading or writing English. Like many Latino children, those at Las Familias live in Spanish-speaking homes, watch Spanish-speaking television, play in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods and then study in Spanish-speaking classrooms. With so little exposure to English in the primary grades, few successfully make the transition to English later. Had the boycott not caught the attention of local and national media, the children would still be in Spanish-language classes. The Ninth Street school boycott proved emblematic of long-festering concerns by Latino parents throughout Los Angeles and California whose children are being denied a future because they are not learning to read and write English. In California, it all begins with a home-language survey given to new students to determine if anyone in the home speaks a language other than English. If an elderly grandparent speaks another language at home, the child must take an English language test -- even if the child was born here and speaks only English. Many 4- and 5-year-olds are not very verbal. Since the language test measures only a child's achievement in English, a child might score low even if English is his or her only language. Indeed, a 1980 study of several California school districts showed that 40 percent of Latinos designated as limited-English-proficient spoke no Spanish at all. Once children are assigned to this educational dead end, it is almost impossible to get out. In 1995, when Ninth Street school parents began their collective effort to extricate their children from the so-called bilingual program, just six students at the school were redesignated as proficient in English. Why? Much of the reason is money. Bilingual teachers in Los Angeles receive up to $5,000 extra a year, and both the schools and school districts receive hundreds of dollars for children kept in Spanish-language programs. California schools receive more than $400 million in state and federal funds each year for students designated limited-English-proficient. Since such money is not easily relinquished, students languish in Spanish-language classes. Unz initiative Predictably, when Ron Unz came to Las Familias shortly after the boycott to talk about drafting an initiative to end this failed 25-year experiment, we were interested. If it had taken a nationally televised boycott to get 90 children out of Spanish-language classes, then short of an initiative, few others would get out. Contrary to the opposition's claims, Proposition 227 does not replace bilingual education with an untried, risky alternative. All other nations in the world use some form of immersion to teach language to immigrant children. In California, some 140 languages are spoken. But four-fifths of those in native-language classes are Latinos. Other immigrant groups receive intensive English classes similar to those proposed in Proposition 227, and all of them do better academically than Latinos. Among immigrant groups, Latinos score the lowest on tests, have the fewest number admitted to universities and have the highest dropout rate. Perhaps that's because Latino children are in programs that purport to teach them English by first teaching them to read and write Spanish for four to seven years. Called ``transitional bilingual education,'' this system moves children into mainstream English classes only when they test out at grade level in Spanish. Few accomplish that. Proposition 227 would replace Spanish-language classes with intensive English classes. Most children would remain in these intensive English-language classes for no more than one year. Parents of children requiring additional time or alternative language assistance could apply for a waiver, which would be granted to children older than 10 or who have spent 30 days in an English immersion program. Most limited-English students begin school in kindergarten or first grade, the easiest age to learn a new language. Since the academic content of those first years is language acquisition, teaching children to read and write English is essential. Even Proposition 227's opponents can't defend the existing state of bilingual education. All insist they are ready to improve it -- but not get rid of it. Yet these very politicians and activists have defeated every legislative effort to fix the problem over the past 10 years. And while Democratic and Republican voters of all ethnicities overwhelmingly support the initiative, their politicians either oppose or duck it. Republicans, wanting to distance themselves from the shameful immigrant policies of the past, are afraid of being labeled anti-immigrant. Democrats, abandoning their traditional support for the poor, have thrown in their lot with the small but powerful monied bilingual interests and the Latino activists within the party. Strange bedfellows At the same time, the initiative has made for strange bedfellows. Unz, author of Proposition 227, is a conservative Republican. I am a liberal clergywoman. And Maria Petra Chaparro is an impoverished garment worker. None of the luxuries and little of the graciousness of life touch her. Making about $800 a month, she has life that is a constant struggle against poverty. Petra worries whether her daughter Paula is learning the English she needs to have a future in this country. She is hoping that on Tuesday, voters in California will show they care, too. Alice Callaghan is an Episcopal priest and the founder/director of Las Familias del Pueblo in Los Angeles. She wrote this article for Perspective.
