Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 2, 1991 TAG: 9102020448
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: FAIRFAX LENGTH: Medium
As a result, tensions have boiled to the surface in Fairfax, as school officials get ready to change school boundaries.
Many English-speaking parents, worried about the quality of their children's education, are resisting boundary changes. Some claim officials are changing borders solely to redistribute language-minority students.
"The question becomes: Do you gerrymander the attendance areas to balance the populations? Do you bus from community to community?" area administrator Stephen Dolinger asked.
"This brings a change for parents," Dolinger said. "They're having a tough time coping with it."
Probably the most heated boundary dispute involves Bailey's, the most ethnically diverse school in Fairfax. There, about 87 percent of the school's 560 students are minorities, and about 81 percent use a language other than English as their first language. About 60 percent qualify for discounted or free lunches.
Some think there should be more English-speaking students at the school to serve as role models for the immigrant children.
Last fall, Bailey's PTA asked school officials to redraw boundaries so English-speaking pupils who attend Sleepy Hollow Elementary, less than three miles west, would be moved to Bailey's.
That proposal died after it met heated opposition from some American-born parents.
"I really don't know what the answer is," said Wanda Martinson, a PTA leader at Sleepy Hollow. "It's not a matter of race. It's a matter of language."
Mary Margaret Hammond, who has a child at Sleepy Hollow, said, "It becomes imbalanced if there's such a large population in need of special programs that there isn't enough of a community left to support the core and advanced programs."
Parents and teachers at Bailey's are irritated at the perception that immigrant children cannot succeed in American schools.
"They just assume falsely that by having different accents and seeing different faces that [the school is] going to be different," said Kent Buckley-Ess, who tutors colleagues in Spanish. "But it's not."
School officials said their boundary decisions are based more on the best use of facilities than on socioeconomic distribution. But some people think sending English-speaking children to Bailey's would cause white students to attend private schools.
"Changing boundaries is not a good enough solution," said Kay Frame, Sleepy Hollow's PTA president. "It's a Band-Aid."
by CNB