Should Bilingual Workers Escape Pink Slips?

When budget shortfalls cause a public agency to lay off employees, is it necessary or justifiable to exempt those employees who are bilingual from the cuts, regardless of their seniority?

The Los Angeles Unified School District, in its recent mailing of pink slips to a variety of credentialed employees, has done just that. About two-thirds of the school psychologists, many with as much as 13 years of experience, are scheduled to be laid off, while their bilingual counterparts have been exempted from the cuts, regardless of their years of experience.

The district has not provided a rationale for exempting its bilingual employees from seniority considerations. However, the tacit assumption that these employees are somehow better able to serve the city’s schoolchildren must be challenged.

The object of the bilingual program is fluency in English. Most students whose primary language is other than English are able to converse adequately in English by the time they are in second or third grade. Therefore, they are able to express their needs and concerns to any employee, regardless of the number of languages that employee may know. In instances in which a student lacks fluency in English, translators are readily available within the schools.

Parents have not expressed an expectation of nor preference for consulting with school staff members who speak their language. Rather, they appear to expect the business of the schools to be conducted in English. Furthermore, many parents opt to have their children enrolled in English-only programs rather than bilingual classes and frequently are themselves taking classes in order to learn English.

The district has not presented any evidence indicating that a monolingual, English-speaking school psychologist is incapable of fulfilling the duties and responsibilities of his or her position. In my 12 years as a psychologist, I have evaluated and placed hundreds of children into gifted or special-education programs, offered competent care to suicidal and abused children, conducted parent-training classes, counseled children and their parents, consulted with school staffs and been the major liaison between my schools and outside agencies. The absence of fluency in one of the “critical languages” identified by the school district has by no means rendered me incapable of doing a good job.

While fluency in a second language may help some school employees perform their duties, being bilingual should not be the sole criterion by which their importance to the children is determined. The members of the Board of Education should avoid endorsing such a policy by voting against the proposed layoffs when they make their final decision in May.