A contract worth almost $1 million to train teachers in bilingual programs was challenged yesterday during a public hearing in the City Council.
The contract between the Board of Education and Aida Walqui of WestEd Company, based in California, was for the certification of 110 trainers of bilingual teachers. WestEd, however, only managed to certify 18 trainers, according to Shelley Rappaport, an ex-teacher who worked as an education analyst at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF).
Rappaport also said that close to $100,000 of the $964,631 contract was used for travel, given that Walqui works in other parts of the country.
“I understand that these travel costs are in accord with New York City Department of Education rules, but even so they seem to me excessive, especially considering the needs of our students,” said Rappaport.
Telephone calls to the Department of Education and to Walqui’s office had not been returned by the time of this printing.
Rappaport’s comments came during a hearing called by the Council’s Education Committee to discuss the problems encountered by students who are learning English.
During the hearing, a wide range of issues were discussed, including one that mandates the City to provide educational services for Latino students who do not speak English -- instituted some 30 years ago thanks to Aspira, an advocacy and educational organization set up to empower Puerto Rican and Latino community youth.
Ángelo Falcón, a director at PRLDEF, which has been charged with supervising the fulfillment of this requirement, said yesterday that the Department of Education is not meeting its responsibility to provide the Fund with reports on the status of pupils in bilingual programs.
Falcón said his group is not receiving data which would allow it to determine whether the Bloomberg administration’s regulations (such as the one that holds students back in the third grade if they do not pass city-wide tests) are affecting non-English-speaking students negatively. Neither is the city providing information on the number of bilingual teachers adequately certified to do their jobs.
Yesterday’s Council meeting was based on the premise that educational programs for students learning English “do not seem to be very successful.”
