Joe Serna's bilingual graduates

Nine years ago, Cammie Plath and her husband, Steve, were looking for a different type of school in which to enroll their first-born son.

The couple was less than thrilled with the neighborhood elementary school their son, Aaron, was expected to attend, but they liked the idea of a charter school. They had a meeting with Michael Gillespie, the principal of Joe Serna Charter School, and decided that a new kind of program was the right fit for their son.

Little did they know that Aaron would graduate from eighth grade last month and move into high school already fluent in Spanish.

He was the first batch of elementary students enrolled in a two-way bilingual immersion program at the Lodi Unified charter school aimed at raising test scores of Spanish-speaking students and teaching English-speaking ones a foreign language at a young age.

"It's amazing where our school has come from, from where it was then," said Gillespie.

The program kicked off in 2002 with the school's youngest grades. Gillespie had began looking at dual immersion programs to improve academics while he was a vice principal at Heritage Elementary School in east Lodi. That campus had operated a bilingual program until voters approved Proposition 227 in 1998, limiting such programs.

So when Serna opened up, he applied for the top position, eager to grow a bilingual program.

Joe Serna Junior Charter School Dual-Immersion Program by the numbers

Two languages taught on campus.
Nine: Number of years recent graduating class spent in the program.
50 percent are primarily Spanish speakers.
287 students enrolled during the 2008-09 school year.
343 dual-immersion programs throughout the nation.
668: School's API score for 2008.
News-Sentinel staff

Although two eighth-grade classes have already graduated from the program, Aaron Plath's is the first to have experienced it since kindergarten.

"They really have come a long way," Gillespie said. "We have found this model works well in learning both languages."

Before the end of first grade, most students have already mastered the days of the week, colors and alphabet — all standard coursework for that grade level — in Spanish, whether that is their native tongue or not.

Mixed classes

Classes are balanced with primarily English-speaking students and Spanish-speaking students to encourage learning among the group.

Based on research that their minds are more malleable, younger students study reading, math and science in Spanish most of the day until third grade, when English becomes more of a focus. Instruction in the languages are then balanced in fourth and fifth grades, and in sixth through eighth grades, students are taught mostly in English.

Students in this program are expected to be proficient in speaking, reading and writing in both languages by the end of middle school.

Cammie Plath, whose two younger children also attend Serna, said her eldest has enjoyed learning Spanish, and actually used it during mission trips to Mexico and on a family vacation.

In the fall, most of the students — including Aaron Plath — will move together to Lodi High School, where a program has been created to continue similar teaching.

Balanced enrollment

The charter school first opened in 2000 at the old site of the First Baptist Church of Lodi on East Oak Street.

In that building, Lodi Unified planned a charter school to ease overcrowding in the Eastside schools — George Washington Elementary, Lawrence Elementary and Heritage Elementary.

Lodi Unified, armed with a possible school site and the knowledge of what was needed in the area, decided to build a charter that focused on strengthening bilingual education, planners said at the time.

At the beginning, Serna had 200 students, but as word-of-mouth about the new program spread throughout the area, children from outside of the three targeted schools started coming in.

At the time, Gillespie said that while 60 percent of the students would have attended Heritage, Washington or Lawrence, students from 17 Lodi Unified school attendance areas were attending Serna.

In 2004, while Hispanics made up far more than half of the Serna student population, only 43 percent of the students were Spanish-speakers. The goal was to have as close to 50 percent Spanish-speakers and 50 percent English-speakers as possible, and Gillespie said that has been met.

Today, Serna has 287 students, with capacity for 300.

Nationwide, there are more than 340 two-way dual-immersion programs in 27 states, according to the Center for Applied Linguistics. Most programs deal with Spanish as a second language, but there are a few in Southern California that integrate Korean with English, and one in Palo Alto that teaches in French and Mandarin.

The closest program to Lodi, however, is at a charter school in Riverbank, near Modesto, said Gillespie, who meets regularly with other schools.

Some parents, including the Plaths, were skeptical of Serna's program at first.

Many voiced concerns that their English-speaking students weren't learning enough of their own language, while Spanish-speaking parents were worried their students would be held back because their English wasn't up to par.

Test scores up

Because of the early emphasis on Spanish-based learning, test scores often lag behind the norm in early grades.

In 2002, for example, Serna's state Academic Performance Index fell 45 points, from 554 to 509. The API factors in standardized test scores and is based on a scale of 200 to 1,000. A score of 800 is the state's target for every school. The drop in Serna's score concerned the district.

But the following year, the score soared up to 617, meeting growth requirements and making the school eligible for state awards.

Last year, it scored 668.

"Since we opened our school, we've gone up 150 points," Gillespie said.

"But when you look at our API, it's not an accurate reflection of what our kids are doing. In second grade we take our tests in English, like everyone else, but we're not even teaching English at that time. We are handicapping ourselves."

Gillespie, personally, believed in Serna's program from the beginning. He placed his fifth-grade son, Sam, in the program when he started school so Sam would be able to communicate with his mother's relatives, who primarily speak Spanish.

His younger son, Jack, is now in the fourth grade. "They are probably more bilingual than I am," Gillespie said.

As for the Plaths, they couldn't be happier with their son's experience, and said they wouldn't change a thing about the program.

"Looking back now, we were so brave because we had no clue how it would all go," Cammie Plath said. "We were the guinea pigs, and it was a pretty brave thing to have those kids do at the time. We were nervous, but also excited about our son learning another language."

Contact reporter Jennifer Bonnett at jenniferb@lodinews.com.

Reader Feedback

Tazz wrote on Jun 23, 2009 3:49 PM:

" My nine year old grandson has been at Serna School since first grade and he is now fluent in both written and spoken Spanish. He also excels in math. This school is a gem in an otherwise bleak system. (If I understand correctly, it is not part of LUSD. One has to apply for admission.)

The principal, Mr. Gillespie, is also fantastic. I knew him years ago when he was vice-principal at Heritage. I wish all LUSD administrators were like him.

It's really too bad that some people immediately start to get ethnocentric and complain about kids learning Spanish. Being bilingual is ALWAYS an asset. Most Europeans are. "

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