English language uproar

Bilingual instruction advocates want to remove entrepreneur and Democratic donor Reed Hastings from the state board:

On Wednesday, Hastings is scheduled to appear before the Senate Rules Committee, where he must gain three of five votes before his confirmation reaches the full Senate. But a powerful Latino lawmaker and vocal groups including the California Assn. for Bilingual Education have mounted a campaign to kill his confirmation.

They complain that Hastings — who founded Netflix, the movie mail-order rental service — has shown insensitivity to the needs of immigrants, primarily Spanish-speaking students.

While Hastings was president of the state board, he and his colleagues adopted a policy that required elementary schools to teach students 2 1/2 hours a day in English to qualify for special federal reading funds. A subsequent law overrode the state board policy, making the funds available to bilingual classrooms where students were learning in Spanish.

California law requires elementary school students to be taught in English, the result of Proposition 227, approved by voters in 1998. But parents can request bilingual education, and about 120,000 students in kindergarten through fourth grade attend such programs.

Still, state Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier), who chairs the Latino legislators' caucus, and the leaders of bilingual education organizations said the board policy unfairly denied resources to children in bilingual programs. The critics also complained that Hastings didn't do enough to make appropriate instructional materials available to Spanish speakers.