Black English Plan OK'd

Black English plan OK'd

Kathy Hulik

EDUCATION REPORTER

The Ann Arbor Board of Education, in a unanimous vote Wednesday night, approved a plan to help King Elementary School teachers recognize black English speakers and used that knowledge to teach reading.

Board attorneys will submit the plan to U.S. District Court Judge Charles Joiner on Monday. Joiner ordered the school district to develop a plan as the result of a lawsuit brought against the schools by parents of 11 black children who live in the Green Road housing project and attend King School.

The suit charged that the black English dialect spoken by the children constitutes a language barrier to their learning to read, and that the schools failed to recognize this.

BOARD TRUSTEES praised the plan. Trustee John Heald questioned whether the district has a legal commitment to extend it to any of the 25 other elementary schools and asked if any attempt had been made to estimate its cost beyond this year.

Superintendent Harry Howard said the plan contains no commitment to extend it, but if any portion is found educationally worthy and contributes to black children learning to read he will recommend it be extended.

Howard said no attempt has been made to estimate expansion costs after the first, court-mandated year.

The plan will cost the district $43,915, of which $32,415 is new funds which will have to be added to this year’s budget.

The plan outlines a program of teacher in-service which would be mandatory for the entire professional staff at King School. From approximately October through March, the staff would participate in 20 hours of instruction in language, dialect, and the features of black English.

For those teachers directly involved in teaching reading, additional sessions would be held, which would be essentially problem solving. The sessions are intended to help teachers work through problems they encounter in the classroom when applying what they learned during the instruction sessions.

THE DISTRICT would employ an outside consultant in linguistics and reading to work with the teachers. King School would have a full time language arts consultant for next year instead of a half time consultant.

At the end of the year, the program would be appraised.

Howard said the King School staff had indicated its full cooperation with the plan. It now faces review by Joiner and lawyers for the Green Road children.

The vote approving the plan was 8 to 0. Trustee Wendy Barhydt was absent.