Scott to become Kansas' second bilingual school

At 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, 17 children sat in Maricela Cerenil’s preschool class, eating breakfast.

“Kevin, ya acabaste todo?” Cerenil said to one of her students, asking whether he was finished.

In Tina Auten’s room next door, a similar scene played out with another group of kids — only, in another language.

Cerenil conducts class in Spanish, while Auten teaches in English — it is the model at Scott Dual-Language Magnet Elementary School, where kids spend part of their day learning in one language, and the rest in the other.

As of this year, Scott is on its way to becoming the second Kansas public school to offer a full-time, schoolwide bilingual program. Though Topeka Unified School District 501 has piloted bilingual classes for four years, last year it took the project a step further by deciding to convert Scott into a fully dual-language school.

As a result, Scott’s nonbilingual classes will gradually disappear. By 2017, all students at the school, which has more than 550 children from preschool to fifth grade, will spend half of their time learning in Spanish and half in English.

That means teaching a wide range of content in both languages for every grade — from math and science to reading.

Cerenil and Auten’s classes are a perfect example of what that looks like.

After their students finished breakfast, they moved to the front of their rooms, sitting down on rugs for a lesson on months of the year.

“September, October, November, December,” Auten and her students sang in one room.

Cerenil’s class next door practiced the same vocabulary in Spanish instead.

“It’s enrichment,” says principal Sarah Lucero, a native Topekan who grew up speaking Spanish and English. “It’s not taking away or threatening English.”

The idea for the program is modeled on Kansas’ first bilingual school, Horace Mann Dual-Language Magnet, in Wichita USD 259. A key proponent has been school board member Patrick Woods, whose desire to see a program like Horace Mann’s in Topeka was part of his motivation for seeking office.

“We need to equip kids with the tools that allow them to compete,” said Woods, whose son, Zen, now attends Scott, and whose wife, Anna, used to teach at Horace Mann. “We live in a world where competition is no longer local or regional. Everything is becoming more globalized.”

That is a sentiment shared by another proponent, the Topeka Chamber.

“Having two languages is a needed skill in today’s society,” CEO Doug Kinsinger said, adding that the Chamber had seen substantial growth in the number of international companies eyeing Topeka as home.

A bilingual school and more bilingual residents will only make the city and its work force more attractive, he said.

But for the school to work as intended, it will have to navigate a number of challenges.

The classes require a balance between native Spanish and English speakers. The idea is that each class should be an even mix, ensuring that children interact with plenty of classmates who have native skills in the language they are learning.

Lucero said that mix is working out so far. Half of the 249 dual-language students speak English at home, about 40 percent speak Spanish and 10 percent speak both.

At the same time, creating a bilingual school costs money. A fully bilingual library alone could cost around $100,000, estimates Ethel Edwards, the school’s librarian until she recently took up the post of union president.

The school board approved $59,725 in new budget items for Scott this year. That will pay for supplies and other expenses, and would likely have been higher had the district not received welcome news in June — a $878,731 federal grant with the possibility of renewal. The federal award is paying for Spanish-language science materials, library books, a bilingual translator and other costs.

Meanwhile, recruiting teachers who are fluent in Spanish and qualified to teach in that language also can pose a challenge.

As the program grows, Scott will add two bilingual teachers per year, says Carla Nolan, head of human resources for USD 501. The ultimate goal is for half of the school’s teaching staff and support staff to be bilingual.

And in three more years, the district may need bilingual middle school teachers, too. That is when the first batch of bilingual students will finish fifth grade at Scott. The district is considering adding a dual-language program within one of its middle schools, and possibly, down the line, adding high-school classes, too.

Ultimately, Lucero hopes, the students might graduate from USD 501 with a bilingual certificate — ideally state-endorsed — that would signal to colleges and employers that the students have a coveted skill.

For Scott’s first batch of bilingual students, though, that day is still many years away. For now they are more likely focused on navigating the third grade. Among the projects on their plate this year is reading the children’s classic “Charlotte’s Web.”

Of course, for students at Scott there is a twist — they are reading part of it in English, and part in Spanish.