AREA SCHOOLS AWAIT CLARITY ON PROP. 227.

Byline: Lisa Mascaro Daily News Staff Writer

Officials in four area school districts - Conejo, Las Virgenes, Moorpark and Simi Valley - say they prefer to wait for possible legal challenges to the passage of Proposition 227 or for direction from the state Department of Education before making any sudden changes in instruction.

If initiative mandated changes were made today, it would leave more than 1,000 students without language instruction in one east Ventura County school district. The number of students receiving instruction in languages other than English would drop from 1,500 to 150 in the 19,000-student Conejo Unified School District.

``Now we'll be dancing around the room, waving our arms, trying to draw chalk drawings to make sure they (the students) know what the concept is,'' said Claudia Spelman, coordinator of pupil services for the Conejo district.

``I think (teachers) would be a little fearful of explaining anything in Mandarin, Japanese or Spanish.''

The wait-and-see approach is a tactic that angers supporters of the popular initiative.

``Districts should be talking to their teachers, providing training if they feel the teachers need it,'' said Sheri Annis, spokeswoman for the English for the Children campaign. ``If they haven't already come up with a clear plan, which in itself is fairly careless, it is extremely important that school districts use this summer to come up with a plan to ensure their children will learn in English come September.''

The proposition passed Tuesday required that within 60 days districts have in place a new program that allows for one year of language assistance for limited-English-proficient students before those pupils are transitioned to mainstream classrooms.

In Moorpark Unified School District, which has the area's largest proportions of limited-English students, officials said there's not much they can do but wait for more information about how to educate their students with limited English abilities.

Last school year, 1,157 of the district's 6,905 students qualified for English language assistance.

``It doesn't have room for planning; it tells us what to do - you will teach English by speaking English,'' said Moorpark school board member David Pollock. ``I don't think we'll have to retrain teachers, they're just going to be given a new prescription.''

Conejo Valley Unified School District students typically take about four years to transition out of the program, which means many students will be forced out of special language instruction before they are ready, Spelman said.

Both Simi Valley Unified and Las Virgenes Unified school district officials said their teachers already teach mostly English in the classroom, relying mostly on ``pull-out'' programs for English instruction, which they believe will still be allowed under the law.

Las Virgenes enrolled just 396 limited English speakers last year, students who were scattered in various classrooms among the 11,000-student district, with no classrooms devoted solely to other than English language instruction.

And in Simi Valley, there were 1,127 limited-English-proficient students among 18,923 pupils last school year, some of whom will need to be enrolled in other classes under the new law.

``It's definitely something we're going to have to look at,'' said Simi Valley school board President Janice DiFatta.

But for the most part, school districts in the east county area are more concerned about upcoming graduations and year-end activities than complying with the new law.

Most said they were expected that legal challenges to Proposition 227 will stall any implementation for now, while others were heeding state Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin's call Wednesday for districts to avoid brash action until the state Department of Education could issue directives.

``The problem is, nobody knows what they're going to have to do,'' said Cliff Rodriguez, director of communication technology and bilingual education for the Ventura County Superintendent of Schools' Office. ``Unless there's some direction from the state, there's so much wiggle room. That's where everyone's going crazy. There's no way to go from this initiative to a program.''

And that doesn't sit too well with supporters, who believe educators need to be doing more to satisfy the will of the voters.

``We think it's completely inappropriate to ignore the voters of California and the law,'' said Annis from the Yes on 227 campaign. ``We believe they should be working to implement the initiative.''