Lawmakers: Exempt Native youth from English learner program
With BC-CNS-Native American-Bills-Box
Photos Available (thumbnails, captions below)
By ALYSON ZEPEDA
Cronkite News Service
PHOENIX (Tuesday, March 17) _ Three northern Arizona lawmakers want to exempt Native American students from English immersion classes the state requires for those who fail a basic language skills test.
The lawmakers, Sen. Albert Hale, D-Window Rock, Rep. Christopher Deschene, D-St. Michaels, and Rep. Tom Chabin, D-Flagstaff, say that Arizona’s English Language Learner program interferes with students who are continuing to learn their native language and inhibits tribes’ efforts to preserve their cultures.
“To preserve their identities, their languages are a critical part of that and I support any action in a tribe’s effort to preserve its own identity,” said Deschene, author of HB 2527, which would provide the exemption.
The three lawmakers, who represent a district that includes the Hopi, Navajo, Hualapai, Havasupai and San Juan Paiute tribes, have introduced several bills dealing with Native American issues. Others would request aid for a poverty-stricken area of the Navajo Nation and appropriate to tribes 50 percent of the state tax on non-Indian businesses on reservations.
The House Education Committee has yet to hear HB 2527. Deschene said he isn’t optimistic because House committees are no longer hearing bills except in special circumstances.
“We will probably have to try again, re-introducing next year,” he said.
The English Language Learner program deals with students whose primary language isn’t English. Those who don’t demonstrate a sufficient grasp of English are placed in immersion classes where they study reading, writing, conversation, vocabulary and grammar for four hours a day until they are proficient.
Chabin, who along with Hale signed on as a primary sponsor to HB 2527, said the way Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne applies the program interferes with Native American culture.
“English comes along but you never, ever should take a native language away from a native tribe, and that is precisely the effect of Horne’s directions to public schools,” Chabin said.
Horne said the program doesn’t curtail native language studies outside of school, adding that learning English is crucial to academic performance.
“If they weren’t learning English it would be devastating to their futures,” he said.
Michael Fillerup, director of bilingual education for the Flagstaff Unified School District, said students who don’t have a basic grasp of English fall behind and are more likely to drop out.
“For a lot of our native students, their language deficit is a lot deeper than we realized and for some reason they are not learning it in mainstream classes,” he said.
Deschene also is the author of HCM 2008, a memorial urging Congress to provide resources to develop the so-called Bennett Freeze area of the Navajo Nation. The federal government restricted construction and infrastructure improvements on that land for decades because the Hopi Tribe claimed the area as its ancestral home.
“We hear a lot about Third World countries, about Third World conditions,” Deschene said. “We have Third World conditions in our own state. That’s what this memorial talks about.”
The House approved the memorial earlier this month.
SB 1454 is Hale’s sixth attempt to give tribes 50 percent of the revenues from the Transaction Privilege Tax the state imposes on non-Native American businesses on tribal land. The tax generated $17 million in the 2008 fiscal year from the Navajo Nation alone and was distributed among the state, counties that contain tribal land and municipalities around the reservation.
Hale said the tax amounts to Native Americans paying money without any benefits because it takes money off tribal lands.
^___=
PHOTOS: Click thumbnails to see full-resolution images and download; caption information is in the file under File>File Info.
Rep. Christopher Deschene, D-St. Michaels
Sen. Albert Hale, D-Window Rock
Rep. Tom Chabin, D-Flagstaff