School Gets Charter Status to Continue Bilingual Ed
The state Board of Education has voted to give charter status to a school in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, allowing it to continue teaching students in both Spanish and English.
Becoming a charter school will allow Edison Language Academy, which has about 400 students in kindergarten through fifth grade, to maintain its dual language curriculum, although most bilingual education programs in the state were prohibited by passage of Proposition 227.
Lori Orum, an administrator at Edison, said: “100% of our teachers were behind the charter, and our whole parent community.”
The decision also allows the school to continue offering language-immersion instruction to about 200 students at John Adams Middle School and Santa Monica High School, Orum said.
Edison is the only school in the Santa Monica-Malibu district that has applied for charter status.
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