L.A. Eases Way for Immigrant Pupils

The first day of school can be frightening for any child, but for one who speaks little or no English, the traumas are compounded. A child might be placed in an English reading class when he can only read in Spanish. Or he could miss the first few days of school because his parents, struggling themselves to learn English, can’t fill out the enrollment forms.

To help ease the entry process and better evaluate new students, the Los Angeles Unified School District on Tuesday launched a pilot pre-enrollment center for immigrant children and their families.

The new Student Guidance, Assessment and Placement Center, on the campus of Plasencia Elementary School near downtown, assesses the health, academic level and language proficiency of immigrant students and decides whether they need special help when the school year begins.

An estimated 163,000 students districtwide--28% of the total enrollment--do not speak English fluently.

More than two years in the planning stages, the center is the first of what its coordinator, Michael Bujazan, said may be as many as 10 such pre-enrollment centers districtwide.

The center serves 35 downtown-area schools that have drawn large numbers of immigrant students in the past.

“I have already received calls from teachers in other parts of the city asking why such a center is not in their area,” Bujazan said.

New families are referred to the center when they attempt to enroll their children in their local school. On Tuesday, the center processed its first 20 families, more than 40 children in all, and in the next year expects to help as many as 6,000 children enroll in Los Angeles schools.

Among the parents at the center Tuesday was Carmen Hernandez, a Lincoln Heights resident whose three children recently joined her from Mexico. In vision examinations, the center’s physician, Dr. Arnelle S. Midley, discovered that the two boys--Leonel, 9, and Israel, 8--may have vision problems that could affect their classroom performance. Their sister, Maria, passed the examination. Leonel and Israel will undergo further examinations to see whether they need glasses.

In another part of the center, a Vietnamese man who spoke no English met with interpreters who helped filled out district registration forms.

Khieng C. Su and his children Phan, 6, and Anh, 7, arrived in Los Angeles on Monday from Sacramento. Su, a refugee, came to the United States two years ago through the assistance of an American sponsor. He left Sacramento, where he said through his interpreter that he could not find school officials he could communicate with.

In all, there are 12 interpreter aides speaking the languages of the five largest immigrant groups in Los Angeles: Armenian, Cantonese Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

The city has budgeted $1.8 million for the first two years of the center’s operation. Similar centers already exist in the Long Beach and San Francisco school systems.

“It’s a drop in the bucket when you look at the whole problem, but we hope to expand it,” Bujazan said. “Eventually there could be centers like this spread out throughout the city. This is the first--this is the pilot.”

Officials at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund called the center a “positive indicator” that the district is starting to address the needs of its growing immigrant student population.

“A drop in the bucket is the right word,” the group’s associate counsel, Jose Roberto Juarez, said of the money set aside for the center. “But it’s important to recognize that it’s a beginning. There is a recognition that these services are not being provided under the current system.”