In AISD, overhaul of dual language program might bring needed change

If Ridgetop Elementary School closes at the end of the school year, Andrew Rottas will miss walking his second-grade daughter to class each morning.

With Ridgetop listed among the proposed closures in the Austin school district’s consolidation plan, that could soon be a reality. But despite his satisfaction with his children’s education — and despite the North Loop school’s popularity and strong academic ratings — the business consultant doesn’t plan to join any effort to press the district to change course. He doesn’t think many other Ridgetop parents plan to either. 

“It’s a great school, the kids are learning a ton,” Rottas said. But he knows it’s not fully meeting its goal as a wall-to-wall dual language immersion program, in which English- and Spanish-predominant students learn together in a bilingual setting, aiming for grade-level fluency in both languages.

It’s falling short because “you no longer have a varied community,” Rottas said. 

Recently: Austin ISD dual language schools face possible relocation amid budget constraints

In the 15 years since the programs began, demographic changes in the neighborhoods around the four wall-to-wall elementary schools — Ridgetop, Becker, Sunset Valley and Reilly — have shifted their makeup, reducing their number of  emergent bilingual students, or those learning English who speak another language at home. A surge in interest from affluent and white Austinites has also contributed to this, said Deborah Palmer, a professor at University of Colorado Boulder who studied these changes at Austin’s wall-to-wall dual language schools. The transformation mirrors a national trend in the gentrification of dual language programs, she added, risking the “intentional integration” that is partially the program’s purpose. 

None of the current sites have more than 40% emergent bilingual students. Becker has 19%. Ridgetop has the fewest, with about 12%. 

The district has not used the term “gentrification” to describe why the programs have evolved as they have or to suggest a need for a change. But it has proposed closing the four schools that house the current programs and relocating them to Pickle, Sánchez, Odom and Wooten elementary schools, which serve larger populations of emergent bilingual students. 

Yvette Cardenas, who leads the district’s multilingual education department, told the American-Statesman the district wants to “center” bilingual students and increase their presence at wall-to-wall campuses. A more even split, Cardenas said, improves learning outcomes for both English and Spanish learners. 

The four current programs are neighborhood schools that allow others to transfer in. Under the district’s proposal, the schools would be open to students districtwide.

The proposal has already met significant resistance. Becker families have rallied at school board meetings and public protests against the plan to close their school and move their wall-to-wall program. 

Yet many academics, educators and parents told the Statesman the district’s proposed changes represent a much-needed reorientation of an important part of its bilingual education offerings. Although the four wall-to-wall programs represent only a small portion of the district’s dual language options, their prestige, popularity and changing demographics make them a key test for how the district defines whom its bilingual education program is meant to serve and how it allocates limited resources. 

The first dual language schools in the U.S. emerged in the 1970s at the urging of immigrant parents. But it was the 1990s, during a time when bilingual education faced backlash from a nationwide English-only movement, that interest in magnet schools brought them to the attention of middle- and upper-class families without cultural ties to the non-English languages being taught, Palmer said. 

As parents began to see bilingualism as cultural capital, public schools marketed dual language programs as boutique alternatives to private and charter options.

“It began to be about more than about just assimilating bilingual kids into English, and instead building bilingualism for a global future,” Palmer said. Bilingualism was now seen “as an advantage, as a richness, as a wealth.”

In Austin, the doors opened about 15 years ago, when chronically low enrollment and repeated threats of closure pushed administrators and parents at schools like Ridgetop and Becker to adopt dual language programs to attract new families. 

The new programs had their desired effect. Although both schools were largely nonwhite and underperforming academically, new parents came, eventually in large numbers. 

With time, the effects became clear. Schools like Becker and Ridgetop gained reputations as popular neighborhood schools, and the neighborhoods around them became home increasingly to white and affluent residents. The emergent bilingual population shrank. 

During that period, the percentage of Hispanic and Black students at Becker, Ridgetop and Sunset Valley declined steadily, according to data provided by Jenna Doane, an educational leadership and policy professor at the University of New Mexico. 

New families also reshaped the school’s culture. Campuses at times struggled to balance the influence of the newer, more affluent and often white parents with less affluent parents of emergent bilinguals, Palmer and former district employees told the Statesman. 

Melissa Adams Corral, who taught at Ridgetop during its first three years as a dual language school, remembers that shift. Ridgetop’s popularity with neighborhood families came quickly, she said — as did a change in culture. Parent-teacher association meetings shifted to being almost exclusively in English, with little interpretation services for Spanish-speaking parents. Adams Corral said she often had to advocate for Spanish-speaking students who were falling behind in reading because the Spanish half of the day — when they received the core of their instruction — was being slowed to accommodate the English-predominant students.

“Schools have a tendency to prioritize parents who have power and sway and the ability to sort of move things,” she said. 

These days, Ridgetop PTA president Lindsey Stuart said she begins each meeting in Spanish, asking if any parents need interpretation services. But during her two years as president, she hasn’t had a single parent request it. 

The group’s efforts to host events specifically for Spanish-predominant families, such as a Know Your Rights event, have failed to engage them, she said.

The programs the district developed in schools west of Interstate 35 have performed well on state tests and fostered strong parent engagement, but many have struggled to develop student fluency in both languages.

That’s partly because the lack of Spanish-speaking families is difficult to circumvent, said Claudia Kramer Santamaria, a former district principal who is now a bilingual education consultant.

“These programs are not meeting the requirements that TEA (Texas Education Agency) places on us,” Santamaria said, referencing the agency’s recommendation for emergent bilingual enrollment. “It’s not quality right now.” 

Austin school board member David Kauffman said some English-speaking families at the current wall-to-wall programs have become among the strongest advocates for the proper implementation of dual language instruction — and he believes many understand that the program’s primary intent is to serve emergent bilingual students.

Moving the program, he said, would help the district address the statewide shortage of bilingual educators and staff its program more efficiently. 

At Ridgetop and Becker, parents have previously lobbied the district to expand its boundaries or bus in emergent bilingual students. Neither proposal was adopted. 

Kauffman told the Statesman the district ultimately rejected the idea because officials felt it wasn’t fair to bring emergent bilingual students to schools away from their homes when there was little interest from families who already had access to programs nearby.  

If the district’s current school consolidation proposal is adopted, the movement of students would occur in the opposite direction. 

Although the district has not finalized a policy governing the makeup of the new schools, Cardenas, who leads its multilingual programs, said the district wants to bring half of the students from English-predominant families and half from Spanish-predominant ones. 

The Austin school board doesn’t plan to vote on a final version of its consolidation plan until late November. It could still yield to parental opposition — a result several parents told the Statesman they fear could be unfair.

Yet the district faces a $19.7 million deficit and has said closing the campuses could save about $25 million. 

The proposal gives families at the four current and four proposed wall-to-wall schools priority enrollment in the new programs. When combined, their demographics would bring the district closer to the English–Spanish balance it seeks.

But it’s unclear how many current dual language parents will move their children to the new sites. Some, like Saraí Salazar, the mother of a Becker fourth grader, said she plans to withdraw her daughter if the plan passes. Others, like Rottas, said they likely will transfer to the new site.

It’s also unclear whether emergent bilingual students at the East Austin schools will stay. Many parents at Pickle and Sánchez told the Statesman they plan to remain if their campuses become wall-to-wall programs. But Jose Soto, a Sánchez PTA member, said some East Riverside families who rely on buses may not be able to stay — even if they want to. The district’s plan does not include bus routes for wall-to-wall schools.

The district has not yet presented a policy outlining who can attend its wall-to-wall programs going forward. Their popularity, Palmer said, raises the possibility of recreating the same demographic imbalance at the new sites if policies aren’t put in place to prevent it.

Other concerns also remain. Parents at Pickle, like Ysela Najar, told the Statesman they worry they might lose access to their weekly English-as-a-second-language class if the school loses Title I funding or has leadership changes. Emiliano Guajardo, a fourth-generation East Austinite and Sánchez parent, said he sees the potential loss of his child’s school — which has long served Austin’s Mexican community — as another form of displacement.  

Looking ahead, the district’s challenge will be to convince parents that the experiences they valued in their old schools can be replicated and improved upon in the new ones, Santamaria said.

At Ridgetop, Stuart, the current PTA president, said parents have begun brainstorming ways to introduce themselves to Pickle families later this year if the district’s proposal takes effect — possibly through a holiday event or neighborhood walk.

Going into an established community will require humility and a willingness to learn, Start said. But with intention, she added, it could give everyone  a chance to “co-create something new together.”