Boston Globe

Legislature Loosens Law on English Immersion 
By RAPHAEL LEWIS AND MICHELLE KURTZ, Globe Staff

A divided Massachusetts Legislature voted yesterday to water down the state's tough new English immersion law, narrowly overriding Governor Mitt Romney's vetoes of five bilingual education measures attached to the 2004 budget.

The most controversial measure, approved by both the House and the Senate, will allow schools to continue and even expand so-called two-way bilingual programs for elementary school students, defying a voter-backed mandate intended to restrict such courses to older children.

Two-way courses, which are offered in about a dozen schools, allow English- and non-English-speaking children to learn each other's languages simultaneously. The programs, though popular, serve only a small fraction of the state's 51,000 limited-English speakers.

But the overrides present the first significant change to the immersion law, something bilingual proponents had vowed to do, even as the ballot initiative swept to passage last November.

Yesterday, parents of students in some of the local two-way programs applauded the Legislature's action.

''You cannot eliminate the strength of foreign nationals that come with a certain language and say: `Forget what you are. Forget who you are. You have to be English only,' '' said Diego Matho, whose 10-year-old son Felipe attends the Amigos School in Cambridge, a two-way program for students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Matho, who was born in Uruguay and moved with his family to the United States 10 years ago, has sent two other children to Amigos to help them retain their native Spanish while they learn English.

In Framingham, the Toledo family had also hoped that the district's two-way program would be salvaged.

''I think that is wonderful,'' said Adrian Toledo, 9, who has attended the two-way program at the Brophy School. ''I really want to continue the Spanish program.''

Last November, voters passed Question 2 on the state ballot with a 68 percent majority. The new law ended three decades of bilingual education by placing immigrant students in one-year, all-English classes before moving them into mainstream courses.

Despite yesterday's actions, the immersion law remains largely unchanged for the majority of limited-English students who are in bilingual programs and for non-English speakers in districts without bilingual programs who still receive help learning English. Families can apply to have some pupils remain in bilingual education: students older than 10, those who already know sufficient English, or those in special education.

Also, the legislative overrides of Romney's vetoes will allow kindergartners with limited English to be educated in mainstream classrooms, possibly with the assistance of an aide who speaks the students' native tongue.

The bills also mandate basic performance standards and assessment of programs for English learners, verified in part every five years by state education officials who will visit school districts.

The margin of victory in both chambers was slim, with the five measures passing, in some cases, by one or two votes beyond the two-thirds majority necessary to override a gubernatorial veto.

Backers in both houses extolled the legislation in prolonged and sometimes heated debate -- which included short speeches in Spanish, French, and French Creole -- saying the bills would prevent segregation of native English speakers from their immigrant peers and inject common sense into the new law.

''We have recognized in this country that segregation is wrong in other forms, when it comes to black and white and children with special needs,'' said Representative Marie St. Fleur, Democrat of Boston and chairwoman of the House education committee. ''What we offer here is integration for English learners.''

Opponents railed against the overrides, saying that the action thwarted the will of Bay State voters.

''No one has proved that the plan voted on is a failure,'' said Representative Philip Travis of Rehoboth, one of more than a dozen Democrats who voted consistently with the Republican minority yesterday in an attempt to block the bills' passage. ''It hasn't even left the blocks.''

Shawn Feddeman, a spokeswoman for Romney, criticized the Legislature's actions as the handiwork of elected officials who ''seem confused about the way democracy works.''

''The people dictate to them, not the other way around,'' Feddeman said.

Boston School Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant said he would be happy to continue two-way courses, even though the city's school system is prepared to implement the larger English immersion program this fall. ''I believe that keeping two-way bilingual education makes sense, because it works, it gets results, it's cost-neutral, and it only affects a small amount of students,'' said a written statement Payzant issued.

Despite the defeat, critics of bilingual education said they were unlikely to mount a new ballot referendum campaign to undo the Legislature's votes, which will automatically become law.

''Frankly, we can't'' do it again, said Carol Sanchez, a Framingham parent of three who helped lead the English for the Children campaign last year. ''If these senators and representatives voted for it, and their constituents don't care, there's nothing we can do about it.''

But Senator Jarrett T. Barrios, Democrat of Cambridge, denied that the bilingual bills passed yesterday constitute anything more than a ''tuning up'' of the new English immersion law. What's more, he accused Sanchez and Romney of changing their position on the issue of two-way education, saying that bilingual education opponents had made it clear prior to last November's referendum that Question 2 would only affect the standard curriculum, not experimental programs that show promise.

''After the campaign, they said: `We want everything. It's our way or the highway,' '' Barrios said. ''Ironically, in their zealousness, they limited the rights of parents to get even more immersion.''

Even without the Legislature's override, students currently enrolled in two-way programs would have been allowed to continue. The future of those programs had been in doubt, because nonnative English speakers generally would have had to take a year of English immersion first, leading educators to fear that the programs would eventually die out.

Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who helped finance last year's referendum effort, said he was not so concerned with two-way courses, but with courses taught solely in Spanish or other non-English languages that he said masquerade as two-way. He said the same about kindergarten courses that would allow classroom aides who speak non-English languages. ''So long as students in that category are placed in classes where they are conducting lessons in English, it doesn't sound that serious, [but] bilingual advocates tend to call things by the wrong names,'' he said. ''I would think they might be trying the same game in Massachusetts.

''When you're talking about a change this massive, if a couple percent of the programs are kept the same, that's not so serious,'' Unz said. ''But if they use this as a loophole, that's a very serious problem. You can call a cow a goat, but it's not a goat.''

Yesterday was the fifth day of House overrides of Romney's more than 370 vetoes, which he said were needed to bring the state's $22 billion budget into balance. His vetoes rejected about $200 million in spending.

Romney's plan to downsize the Boston Municipal Court was officially scuttled yesterday when Senate Democrats overturned his veto with a 25-12 vote. The House and Senate also restored $3 million in spending for psychiatric services at Worcester State Hospital, while the Senate restored $2 million for universal school breakfast programs.

Anand Vaishnav of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Material from the Associated Press was also used.