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Spanish vote erupts into controversy

By Tony Ku

Passing the school board’s second reading of a mostly uncontroversial agenda item should have been simpler than most would have imagined.

But for a 3-1 vote that looked like it wouldn’t take even the allocated 15 minutes, the issue of Spanish curriculum in the Kyrene schools turned into what amounted to a battle of David versus Goliath.

David, in this case, was comprised of those recommending a new approach to teaching Spanish. Goliath was the holdout faction questioning the very foundations of the proposed change.

“The intent of what I’m doing is not to embarrass anyone,” said board member Slade Mead as he questioned curriculum presenters as to why there wasn’t a two-tracked system where more accelerated students could learn at a faster pace.

The debate over a two-track system started after board members viewed statistics that indicated some middle schools place more students into higher levels of Spanish in Tempe high schools.

“Why are we afraid to let some (students) attack higher levels of languages?” Mead asked. Mead wasn’t the only one voicing concerns.

“I’m troubled by this one-size-fits-all strategy,” said board member John Doney and lone dissenter to the curriculum.

Another issue that both Doney and Mead expressed concerns over was aligning the curriculum to match the Tempe Union High School’s placement test.

District Spanish instructor Lori Vanover said middle- and high- schools have tried to work together in the past.

“We’ve had several different years of articulation with the high schools,” she said.

“In the first year we determined the content to be inappropriate, and spent the second year discussing the alignment.”

Despite the discussions, Vanover said, the problem was that Tempe high schools did not have one uniform curriculum, making it difficult to align the middle schools with the high schools.

“It seems to me there is some disconnect between what we were talking about previously in the sense that we’re unsure of how implementation should work,” said Board President Rich Zawtocki.

“Our goal here is to pass the curriculum looking at content, and we can certainly talk about implementation at another time.”

When all was all said and done, the governing board voted 3-1 to approve the proposed Spanish curriculum, with the unspoken understanding that the details of how it will work can decided later.

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