Shuang Wen Supporters Step Up War on NY1

I am just one Shuang Wen parent — not elected, not a leader, just someone who has been around for a number of years, although not long enough to fully understand this very complicated situation.

To those who ask why Shuang Wen is not answering all their questions, the answer is that few of us know enough of this morass of facts to speak authoritatively about them. The principal has been directed by the DOE to refrain from speaking about the situation. It is very, very difficult to get the information all of you are asking for.

I can, however, begin to give you a flavor of the complexity of the issues and the intensity of the emotions, and hopefully show you why the story does not lend itself to sound-bite reporting.

Admissions: In the early years of the school, many students were admitted from out of district. Admissions were handled by the school’s administration through 2005. (If this statement conflicts with Ms. Donlan’s understanding of the admission rules, I don’t have enough information to explain why, and I hope someone else will chime in here.) In 2005 or 2006, admissions began to be handled by the DOE’s Region 9 office, which continues to control admission to the school. At that time, the lottery practice began. My memory is that in order to participate in the 2006 lottery, one had to live in the district, but it may not have been the first year this was so. There have been exceptions since that time regarding sibling admissions for folks who lived out of district when the admission procedure changed and other such issues.

What precisely the rules have been from one year to the next, I cannot tell you. I do know that the school is now substantially less diverse than it was when the school administration was handling admissions. That could have to do with a Supreme Court case (decided perhaps in 2007?) that essentially removed racial considerations from admissions decisions.

At least some of Ms. Donlan’s questions can probably be answered by the DOE (if they are talking). The ones dealing with more distant history are harder to answer.

Is the after-school program mandatory? It was once, but it is no longer. The only way to understand this issue is to understand that the school is in a period of transition. The first aspect of the transition is caused by our economic crisis. The after-school used to be free but is no longer because it would run out of money mid-year if it were still free. The Shuang Wen community has been aware since about 2005 that its after-school was facing diminishing funding. Since that time, parents and administrators have discussed, analyzed and brain-stormed about what to do. The options were to: seek more funding (obviously), charge for what was un-funded with the consequence that the program could no longer be mandatory, or shrink the program or shut it down altogether. The charging option was chosen and, notably, it was recently ratified by a petition signed by over 900 parents — a development that is fully consistent with the fact that 95% of Shuang Wen students are enrolled in the after-school despite the charge.

The second aspect of the transition is the school’s transformation into a “dual language” program. On this subject too, my knowledge is limited. In a nutshell, the school and DOE are working to create a program that would teach all subjects in both English and Mandarin during the regular daytime hours (8:30 to 3) and would be paid for with DOE money. The dual language format already characterizes the pre-K and K levels at the school and may move up with these kids as they age through the school. Obviously, an arrangement of this kind is preferable to one that involves an after-school with a charge. But making this kind of change is difficult and will take years of trial and error. Mandarin is a difficult language, and children in Asia spend years copying the characters before they can confidently use them. And remember that the kids are going to have to be well-prepared for those ELA and math tests.

The fact that we are in transition caused both by the economic crisis and the slow, uncertain change-over to dual language is the main reason for all the confusion about the mandatoriness issue. As in any transition, there are many details that have not yet been worked out. A handful of non-core subjects are, and always have been, taught in Chinese during the day. (I can’t give a detailed catalogue of those because I do not know them.) But they have never, nor will they ever, be a basis for requiring a family to leave the school or for a child to under-perform in a class because he/she doesn’t know the language. This has not happened yet, and it won’t. The fears about this issue (expressed in the reporting by two parents) are purely speculative. I note that Saultan Baptiste, the main spokesman for this speculative position, withdrew all three of his children from the after-school last year (2009-2010 school year) while it was still free. Seven other kids opted out that year. Thirty-six opted out this year. None of them have experienced consequences as a result of that move.

Past references to the program being mandatory all were uttered when the program was still free, and appeared in publications or websites that were created by volunteer parents, none of whom are still at the school. Was it sloppy of us to fail to correct these issuances? Perhaps. There has never been a person whose job it was to maintain/update these sites and publications. Proficient English-speakers are in the minority of parents at this school, and our hands are full, especially now with this media feeding frenzy. But do public schools typically have paid webmasters? I can tell you ours does not. This is what it means to operate on a shoe-string budget.

The Triad: I am grateful to VFV for opening up discussion of this group. I have heard it called a Tetrad, or Foursome, or Quad, but no one really knows how many of them there are. Nevertheless, there is strong evidence that you can count them on one hand. I will call them the Four.

Some of Shuang Wen’s most involved parents have recently withdrawn their children from the school, citing fears of the Four. I am not at liberty to describe in this post the tactics the Four have used that have brought about these departures. The goals of the Four are unknown and probably vary from individual to individual. Their efforts are unified and organized. What is excruciating for the rest of us is that these individuals are the very people to whom NY1 and the Times gave the most air-time.

According to my knowledge, the PA vote ratifying the money transfer that the Four challenged was 139 to 1, rather than VFV’s 152 to 2 — but we know there were two parents present who opposed it. The Four did attempt to have DYCD funding withdrawn from the after-school program as VFV said, but the economy has played a larger role, I think, in the withdrawal of major government funding. The media blitz, however, will severely harm our fund-raising and have the effect of raising the cost of the after-school for all of us.

Consider the constellation of facts. Shuang Wen’s principal is under a gag order. The rest of us are volunteers with jobs and children to raise. The number of us who are proficient in English is very small, and we spend a lot of our time seeking funding, which will now be much harder to obtain. The school is going through a transition that is difficult to explain to people on the outside. Bias against Asian-Americans is a reality that even I did not understand until these events began developing. We do not have a PR representative or anyone experienced in managing public relations. It is also frightening, quite frankly, to speak out, knowing that the Four will be watching and listening. Perhaps they know my home address.

My knowledge is imperfect but I hope I have supplied enough to intercept the leap to judgment.