Parents, teachers offer ideas for school

COSTA MESA — For about a minute on Wednesday evening, Laura Martinez showed everyone gathered at Pomona Elementary School what it felt like to be an English-learner.

The kindergarten teacher was one of nearly two dozen speakers who took the microphone at the school’s public hearing, held after the government placed Pomona on a corrective action list in August. Martinez wanted to demonstrate how difficult it was for Spanish-speaking children to keep up with English-speaking teachers — so she befuddled everyone present by rattling off a few sentences in Hebrew.

“That’s what our students are hearing,” she said as the room burst into applause. “Our students hear these guttural sounds, and the magic is that they still learn English at Pomona.”

Difficulty with language wasn’t the only grievance aired at Wednesday’s hearing, in which teachers and parents complained of understaffed after-school programs, lack of field trips and even an overly short lunch period. Many speakers defended Pomona’s staff and students and decried comments made in a hearing panel’s report.

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District assembled a seven-member investigative panel in the fall after Pomona, Wilson Elementary School and TeWinkle Middle School moved onto year three of the federal Program Improvement list. Schools with low-income populations enter the list when their test scores fall short of federal marks for three consecutive years. When schools remain on the list for three years, they must make changes or risk sanctions.

The panel’s draft report in December recommended that Pomona instate a new English-learner curriculum, extend the school year and day, and appoint an administrator to assist Principal Janis King. A number of speakers Wednesday favored the English-learner change — which Newport-Mesa plans to install districtwide in the coming months — but bristled at some of the report’s claims.

Third-grade teacher Julpha Dormitorio noted a line about Pomona staff lacking “a sense of urgency for improvement or change” and said the panel, which visited the school for only one day, had little authority to make such a judgment.

“Although that was what you might have seen or heard during your day here, I assure you that was not the case at all,” Dormitorio said.

Parents, most of whom spoke through a translator, also said their children’s teachers worked overtime to help students. Several, though, pointed to the need for classroom volunteers and certified teachers in the after-school program.

“Just imagine, if it’s hard for a parent to have five children at home, think how hard it is for a teacher to have 18 or 20,” parent Rosa Romero said.