Speech Therapists Fear Prop. 227’s Potential Impact

Juan Rodas has learned to watch his tongue.

The 5-year-old stared into a tiny mirror framed in the belly of a pink, one-eyed cat one recent rainy morning in North Hollywood and was careful to keep his tongue behind his teeth as he practiced the sound, “sss, sss, sss.”

Sol, cebra, zapato--sun, zebra, shoe--the chubby-cheeked boy recited, as speech and language therapist Robin Garrett held up flashcards in English and Spanish.

A year ago, the Fair Oaks Elementary School kindergartner was diagnosed with a severe speech disorder known as aphasia, a blanket term for not being able to communicate. But Juan was lucky: His therapist could treat him in his native language, an anomaly at a time when, across the country, speech therapists are in short supply and those who speak more than one language are even more rare.

In the great debate over bilingual education, bilingual speech therapists may seem a mere footnote. But educators worry that if Proposition 227, the initiative to eliminate bilingual instruction, is approved by voters June 2, the district’s estimated 60 bilingual speech therapists will be overrun with poor English speakers who are mistakenly referred for treatment. The proposition would not eliminate bilingual therapy.

“We’d go back to a time when kids who didn’t know English flunk out and are seen as being retarded,” said Silvia Martinez, of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Assn., based in Maryland.

“Speech and language pathologists will start receiving referrals for special education,” she said.

Without proper treatment, students with impaired speech often have trouble reading or writing, and risk being teased, all of which can damage self-esteem and lead to more problems in school. In more severe cases, some children are unable to carry on a conversation, or they may end up illiterate.

Therapists’ Caseloads Are Already Heavy

Juan, the North Hollywood boy, spoke so little that he was initially recommended for special education school by a speech evaluator. But the shy boy remained at elementary school after his mother and school officials agreed to try mainstreaming with supplementary classes. Garrett said that her knowledge of Spanish helped the son of a Guatemalan immigrant to start mimicking the sounds most familiar to him.

“It would be much harder if I didn’t know Spanish,” Garrett said. “I can tell what’s going on, how to pick out an error.”

Bilingual clinicians are invaluable, school officials said, because it’s up to them to discern whether mistakes are due to an unfamiliarity with English or a deeper problem. Yet fewer than 1% of speech therapists are bilingual, according to a 1995 survey of Speech-Language-Hearing Assn. members.

Speech therapists already carry heavy caseloads, in part because their rigorous education and training dissuades large numbers from entering the profession. Demand for speech therapists exceeds supply not only in the Los Angeles Unified School District but nationwide.

Although the state recommends that school speech specialists have caseloads no greater than 55 students each, L.A. Unified’s 260 therapists are treating more than 17,000 students with speech and language disorders--an average of 65 students each. The therapists travel to as many as three campuses a week, seeing student after student in harried half-hour to hourlong sessions.

“The shortage is more than anyone can imagine. The need is beyond words,” said Carolyn Conway Madding, a communicative disorders professor at Cal State Long Beach.

The road to rehabilitation can be especially difficult for children not proficient in English--all the way from assessment to treatment to parent involvement. And for reasons scientists have yet to fully explain, said professor Hortencia Kayser of New Mexico State University, minorities are more likely to have speech and language disorders--15%, compared with 5% to 10% in the general population, possibly because of malnutrition and other socioeconomic factors.

By law, assessment of the speech problem must be in the native language, with district translators or volunteers called in to assist. But in most cases, district officials say, the months or years of therapy are in English.

“They’re basically teaching in English,” said Judy Bossier, district coordinator for special education. She added that students could follow by example certain exercises, such as intonation or articulation, without knowing English.

Language Barriers Hinder Progress

Some experts said that treating children in a language that they’re still struggling to learn slows progress. For example, a child who speaks with an English vocabulary of a 3-year-old but functions at the cognitive level of a 10-year-old may not be working to his full potential with a monolingual therapist.

Confronted by a shortfall of bilingual therapists, clinicians are turning to other strategies. Some rely on volunteer translators or use “sheltered English,” which uses repetition, simplified vocabulary and visual cues. It’s a long process. English-only therapy generally moves at a much slower pace than treatment in the native language of the student.

“It’s harder,” sighed Barbara Staley, a longtime speech specialist at Montague Street Elementary School in Pacoima who knows a smattering of Spanish.

One recent morning, Staley practiced “t” sounds with three Spanish-speaking charges by having them flick red licorice twists with their tongues.

Staley said she felt lucky to have Anna Castaneda, a bilingual 32-year-old mother who wanted to become more involved in the schools. In one session, Castaneda helped one of Staley’s Spanish speakers, an 8-year-old girl, recognize the difference between a door and a lighthouse, which the Pacoima child had never seen before.

Having a trained translator or assistant can bridge the language and culture gap, Staley said. Educators suggested that therapists look close to home for help.

“We need to go into the community, into their neighborhood, into their temples,” said Li-Rong Lily Cheng, a professor of communicative disorders at San Diego State University. “Our work is not bound by brick walls or the gates of the school.”

Times staff writer Jose Cardenas contributed to this story.