San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/series/bilingual-schools/)
Education or deportation?
That’s one startling question we are grappling with as San Francisco becomes more of a political outlier in the aftermath of the 2016 elections. The imminent need for documenting this divergence makes our jobs as independent local journalists more important than ever.
Our cover story on bilingual education in this issue, which we started reporting this summer, has taken on new relevance. With immigrants — both legal and undocumented — increasingly demonized by our national leadership, the progress that San Francisco public schools have made in extending bilingual education to both newcomers and native-born could be rendered moot if Donald Trump follows through with his threats to deport masses of immigrants.
Read our letter from the editors: Don’t Take Civil Rights for Granted. Translated below in Spanish, Arabic and Chinese.
ABOUT THIS REPORTING PROJECT
In addition to interviewing educators, parents, children and researchers for this special report, the Public Press compiled and compared outcomes for immigrant students in the largest school districts in the Bay Area and districts of similar size throughout California.
REPORTING: Jeremy Adam Smith, Hye-Jin Kim, Nadia Mishkin, Shinwha Whang | PROJECT EDITORS: Noah Arroyo, Michael Stoll, Michael Winter | DATA GRAPHICS: Amanda Hickman | PHOTOGRAPHY: Nadia Mishkin | ONLINE: John Angelico
This project was made possible by a grant from California Humanities, a reporting award from the Education Writers Association and donations by Public Press members.
Key developments in American languages, from early U.S. history through the November 2016 passage of state Proposition 58, which ended English-only instruction in California. See How San Francisco Paved the Way for California to Embrace Bilingual Education for the overview, and other stories in this reporting project at sfpublicpress.org/bilingualschools.
Jeremy Adam Smith, Freelance writerThere’s good news in the San Francisco Unified School District. It is succeeding in educating students in multiple languages, producing citizens and workers who are better equipped to navigate a cosmopolitan global economy compared with the rest of the country.
Jeremy Adam Smith, Freelance writerFor almost two decades, the San Francisco school district mostly ignored Proposition 227, which emphasized English-only instruction. Today, with the passage of Proposition 58, the city stands as a leader in bilingual education while much of the rest of the state catches up.
¿Educación o deportación?
Esta es una cuestión alarmante con la que estamos lidiando a medida que San Francisco se vuelve un elemento en la periferia política como consecuencia de las elecciones de 2016. La inminente necesidad de documentar esta divergencia hace que nuestra labor como periodistas locales independientes sea más importante que nunca.
教育還是遣返？
這是一個我們正在積極抗爭的駭人問題，因為在2016年大選結果出爐後，舊金山已經淪為美國政治局外人。基於對這種分歧現象有迫切記錄的需要，身為獨立地方新聞工作者，我們的工作變得比以往更加重要。
التعليم ام الترحيل ؟
لعل هذا هو السؤال المحير الذي نواجهه لما تعانى منه سان ف ا رنسسكو من انح ا رف سياسى في أعقاب انتخابات عام
Education or deportation? That’s one startling question we are grappling with as San Francisco becomes more of a political outlier in the aftermath of the 2016 elections. The imminent need for documenting this divergence makes our jobs as independent local journalists more important than ever.
This letter is also available in Spanish, Chinese and Arabic.
