Immersion or segregation? Trost Elementary becomes a language-immersion-only school
CANBY -- Trost Elementary kindergartener Brisa Vega, 6, looks on as her friend Paola Cabello, 6, paints an octopus. The girls are among hundreds of children enrolled in Trost's dual language immersion program, where students learn to speak both Spanish and English. Next year Trost will become a magnet school and will only use the language immersion model. All English-only students will be moved elsewhere in the district.The realignment reflects a changing community, but some parents criticize the move as favoring Latino and bilingual students at the expense of the school's remaining and generally white native English speakers.
A decade ago, Trost was a neighborhood English-only school. But as numbers of Latino students grew, the school added special classes of students, half who speak English at home and half who speak Spanish at home. Students whose parents chose to place them in the immersion program started in kindergarten speaking Spanish most of the day. The goal is to teach the Spanish-speakers English, as is required by law, and to make
