Methuen school officials dispute mother's claims about daughter's ESL class

By J.J. Huggins
Staff writer

Sat, May 17 2008

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METHUEN — School officials dispute claims made by a mother who said her daughter was repeatedly, and wrongly, placed in an English as a Second Language program.

Oneida Torres, a 9-year-old fourth-grader at Tenney Grammar School, was placed in an English as a Second Language program for two months when she was in the first grade, not for three years, said Jane Sigillo, supervisor of the School Department's language acquisition department.

The girl only speaks English.

Sigillo addressed the School Committee yesterday and disputed claims Oneida's mother, Aidria Torres, made in a March 16 article in The Eagle-Tribune.

Torres told the newspaper that Oneida was placed in an English as a Second Language program in first grade, then removed, only to be placed in it again in the second and third grades.

Sigillo, speaking at a School Committee meeting late yesterday afternoon, said that was not true. Torres could not be reached for comment last night.

Sigillo provided the committee with a memorandum of what she said are the facts.

Oneida entered first grade in September 2004. School officials saw that her parents listed Spanish as the primary language at home, so a teacher tested Oneida's English speaking and listening skills, the memorandum said.

Based on the girl's performance, she was assigned to the English as a Second Language program. The school sent a letter dated Sept. 30, 2004, to her parents to inform them, the memorandum said.

"About two months later — sometime in November, Oneida's mother called to say she did not want her daughter in ESL because her daughter speaks only English," the memorandum said. "Oneida was immediately removed from the ESL class as a result."

The school sent a letter to Oneida's mother a year later — in September 2005 — inviting her to enroll her daughter in the Parent Partnership for Achieving Literacy (PAL) program, which is an after-school program for students who speak another language or come from a home where another language is spoken. PAL is not part of the English as a Second Language program, Sigillo said. The people who run PAL asked teachers to recommend students for the program, and somebody recommended Oneida.

Torres sent the school a letter saying her daughter only speaks English and told them never to put Oneida in English as a Second Language classes.

"She was not in ESL at that time," Sigillo's memorandum said. "If Oneida had been in ESL class in her second-grade year — I had a new teacher in the ESL position at the time who is no longer employed with us — it would have been only for a matter of days in September. I recall telling this new teacher early in September that Oneida's mother had 'opted her out' of ESL."

Oneida is listed as "limited English proficient" because of her score on the English test when she was in the first grade, and therefore school officials have been testing her English skills every March, the memorandum said.

"This March, Oneida must have told her mother that she was taken from her classroom for an ESL test; that is when her mother called my office, furious that her daughter was in ESL classes again," Sigillo said in the memorandum. "This, of course, was incorrect."