Kansas City: School prevails in English-only lawsuit

[Harold Schiffman]

School prevails in English-only lawsuit
BY RON SYLVESTER
The Wichita Eagle

Jeff Tuttle/The Wichita Eagle

School prevails in English-only lawsuit
Judge: English-only policy didnt create hostile environment

A federal judge ruled Friday that a Wichita Catholic school policy
requiring students to speak only English didn't break any civil rights
laws. But U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten criticized both sides
in the lawsuit for the way they handled the conflict and characterized
St. Anne Catholic School's implementation of its English-only policy
as "one-sided." "It has divided a school, its church and
congregation," Marten said. "It has divided the Hispanic community in
its congregation. And it has touched a nerve in this community and
across the nation."

But Marten said the policy didn't rise to the level of a "hostile
educational environment" -- the legal standard applying to this case
-- and denied a request from three Hispanic families to end the
practice at St. Anne. Marten said school administrators resisted
working with Spanish-speaking parishioners to resolve a dispute that
seemed to single those students out. "They implemented the
English-only policy without consulting with the segment of the school
it would impact the most," he said.

School officials testified that English-speaking students at St.
Anne's middle school were intimidated by hearing their peers speak in
a language they didn't understand.

The English-speaking children felt excluded and humiliated, fearing
they were being ridiculed in a foreign language, administrators said.

The Spanish-speaking students said they felt harassed and ostracized
by being prohibited from speaking a language common in their family
and culture.

Jay Fowler, the Catholic Diocese of Wichita's lawyer, argued that no
court has acknowledged a right to speak a foreign language at school.
But the students said they suffered consequences for being different.
One student, Adam Silva, was asked to leave a school that his siblings
had attended for a decade.  "Adam Silva didn't do anything wrong,"
Marten said. "Where's the fairness there?" Clara Silva, Adam's mother,
said after the ruling that Marten's statement helped their family,
which had heard Adam called a bully and troublemaker.

"My son is a great kid," she said, "and he never did anything wrong."
School officials said Adam, who now attends a public school, had been
asked to leave St. Anne after he tried to sit with other
Spanish-speaking students at lunch. Administrators said that defied a
rule that required the Hispanic children to sit with white children at
lunch, a rule Marten said was only applied to one ethnic group.

"The Caucasian students were not told to go eat lunch with the
Hispanic students or participate in their soccer games," he said. "It
was all directed at the Hispanic students."

The English-only policy was implemented in the fall of 2007 by St.
Anne principal Sister Mary Nugent.

But the judge said that in order to meet the legal standard for being
a hostile environment, the policy would have had to impede learning.
Marten said the policy wasn't implemented long enough, nor enforced
severely enough, to deprive the students of an education.

Evidence presented by lawyer Ross Hollander on behalf of the families
pointed to instances where white students openly ridiculed Hispanic
students, questioning their citizenship and right to be in Wichita.

School administrators testified they had acted swiftly to discipline
students who made ethnic slurs.

The Rev. Thomas Leland, St. Anne's pastor, said that English was the
"common ground" for all the students and teachers.

"As long as we have a common ground, that is where we have to meet,"
Leland testified Friday.

A diocese spokesman said the church realizes there's mending to do in
the parish, about a third of whose members are Hispanic.

"There's a desire to bridge the problem," Fred Solis said on behalf of
the diocese, "and to bridge the pain."

Leland said that when school starts Monday at St. Anne, the
English-only policy will remain in force.

http://www.kansas.com/213/story/495943.html

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