Spanish-Speaking Student Gets Apology

Spanish-Speaking Student Gets Apology
Kansas School Superintendent Apologizes to Student Suspended for Speaking Spanish at School
The Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Kan. Dec 9, 2005 — A school superintendent apologized to a student who was suspended last week for speaking Spanish at school.

Zach Rubio, a 16-year-old high school junior, was sent home from the Endeavor Alternative School on Nov. 28 for talking in Spanish at lunch and later in the day. Principal Jennifer Watts sent him home and suspended him through the following day.

District officials said Watts told the boy's father the suspension was a direct result of his speaking Spanish. Superintendent of Schools Bobby Allen reversed the suspension within hours of learning about it from the father, the district said.

"As soon as he found out, he contacted the parent and said that should not have happened," said Bart Swartz, the district's executive director of certified personnel.
(snip/...)

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1389917




SPANISH AT SCHOOL TRANSLATES TO SUSPENSION
Written by T.R. Reid - Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, 09 December 2005
Most of the time, 16-year-old Zach Rubio converses in clear, unaccented American teen-speak, a form of English in which the three most common words are "like," "whatever" and "totally." But Zach is also fluent in his dad's native language, Spanish -- and that's what got him suspended from school.

"It was, like, totally not in the classroom," the high school junior said, recalling the infraction. "We were in the, like, hall or whatever, on restroom break. This kid I know, he's like, 'Me prestas un dolar?' <'Will you lend me a dollar?'> Well, he asked in Spanish; it just seemed natural to answer that way. So I'm like, 'No problema.' "

But that conversation turned out to be a big problem for the staff at the Endeavor Alternative School, a small public high school in an ethnically mixed blue-collar neighborhood. A teacher who overheard the two boys sent Zach to the office, where Principal Jennifer Watts ordered him to call his father and leave the school.
(snip)

The National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group, says that 20 percent of the U.S. school-age population is Latino. For half of those Latino students, the native language is Spanish.
(snip/...)

http://www.amhersttimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=419&Itemid=27

You'd think they'd be thrilled and think they were 'speaking in tongues!....

They're bound and determined to demonstrate to the rest of the nation that the people of Kansas cannot evolve in a higher form of intelligent life.

seems to be the appropriate motto. You't think that rejecting science is embarrasing enough. Now they start picking on minorities. Way to go!:mad:

thank god.

(see I Cor 12 and 14)
:sarcasm:

I saw on another forum the other day that the kid had been suspended. I am glad someone has the guts to post that it was injustice at it's finest.

Does this mean that people who are learning a foreign language IN school need to watch out about practicing with their classmates in the halls?

While I think all classes should be taught in one language and that language should be English (unless of course it is a foreign language course) I think that if a kid can speak two languages he ought to be patted on the back as long as he isn't cussing people out in some other language.

I'm glad he got back in school.

where a large amount of voters come from.:eyes:

Suspended for speaking Spanish? Granted, this is the student's first language, but I remember the days when taking language courses, it was OK to practice your learned second language while at school.

Kansas educational system is whacko!

In the spirit of Dan Aykroyd and SNL: Kansas, you ignorant slut!

Idiotas, que estan pensando uds.? America doing itself in...

Requires an outright condemnation of the state. I posted about this earlier, my point was to not condemn Kansas but to condemn the actions of the person. This is the snobbery of the east and west coast that frankly annoys a midwesterner such as myself.

in whole load of similar stuff that Kansas has to answer for. Like Fred Phelps. Intelligent Design as science. Etc, etc, etc.

I'm sorry every state has its share of wacko's look at yours for example... http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp?S=SC&m=3

or she wouldn't have taken that approach, if she had any expectation of keeping her job.

You're right. She has a lot of low standards around to use as guideposts. Thank god the superintendent at least had a bit of common sense, and was able to avoid falling prey to some very ugly, primitive, xenophobic, arrogant ignorance which has engulfed the teacher.

I'm just sayin' ...

Bake

I do wish however that the opinions of people like you were more widely known. To outsiders it seems that Kansas is becoming more and more backwards.

It also happened in a place that seems to be leading the nation in acts of gross ignorance, hence the comments aimed at the state as a whole.

Something IS afoot in Kansas and it ain't pretty. To not recognize that is willful blindness.

hey, I'm in KY -- and we have our own stereotypes, some true, some false. But Kansas does seem to be on its own special course.

on these different fronts, will make some folks in KS start to think more critically per policies being sold to them. SO much of rw rhetoric is cloaked in emotive logic with superficially "sound" (only on the surface) logic - meant to appeal on a gut level... but harder to swallow if one thinks about the implications. Perhaps the more folks who are confronted with the reality (i.e. the implications) of various knee-jerk policies - the more there will be more collective reflection before such policies are blindly accepted.

Kansas has been going batshit crazy lately.

What IS the matter with Kansas?

WTF? ooooooo furiners plotting against the establishment?

What the HELL is wrong with people. That kid should be ENCOURAGED to use his skills, (may corrected for using "like" too much but that is just teen-speak) not friggin' PUNISHED!

I couldn't possibly get bent out of shape if someone criticizes the very real problems the hard-right in this area presents not only to the state but to the rest of the country.

My late mother started mourning the foot-hold they were getting here during Reagan's Presidency, when the right-wing started getting very, very controlling. She saw it coming, commented on it with anguish, and she was goddamned right to do it.

She was a Kansas native. She knew what she was talking about.

:rofl: I am glad we are past that uber whateverness. Fine, be that way. :rofl:

I actually pay for my son to LEARN spanish and speak it whenever he can as I believe that will be a benefit to him when he grows up. If spanish isn't practiced on a consistent level, you can lose the ability to use the language.

I am so thankful for the diversity in my area.

While it is Spanish, it is also pretty much now a colloqial english phrase as well. I mean there are many people who know no Spanish who say "No problema"

"It was, like, totally not in the classroom," the high school junior said, recalling the infraction. "We were in the, like, hall or whatever, on restroom break..."

That's English? :crazy:

But seriously, folks, if he was in the habit of addressing his teachers or fellow students in Spanish DURING CLASS, then I'd agree with the prinicipal that action was warranted. But the kid obviously knows the difference--he gets it, and the adults do not?

:headbang:
rocknation