At home, Yasmin and Kimberly Cruz would try talking to their dad after school. They'd tell him about their day, about school and homework, but Jose Cruz would remain silent. He didn't understand what his preschooler and first-grader were saying to him. He didn't understand English.
"It was frustrating," Cruz says.
He is one of many parents in the South Bay whose children enter the school system and begin learning English, which in turn makes it more difficult for parent and child to communicate in the same language, be it Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog or Farsi. Many schools and school districts offer these parents an option to participate in their children's education, through English classes, training in how to volunteer in the classroom or even encouragement to read at home, regardless of the language.
In 1998, California voters passed Proposition 227, the English Language in Public Schools Initiative. According to the wording of the legislation, the law itself was a response to two decades poor education of immigrant children, who had high drop-out rates and low English literacy.
The law stated that every child in the state was to learn English in the classroom, and as part of this, their parents would have the opportunity to do the same in order to help further their child's success. The program that would make this possible for the parents is Community Based English Tutoring, or CBET. This program is