Schools

Latino Parents 'Distraught' over Quality of Teachers

An Orange County school board member says California children aren't getting an equal education.

All teachers are not created equal, and one Orange County school board member believes Latino communities get the raw end of the deal.

“I speak Spanish, I speak to my Latino friends and they are distraught over what is happening to their children in the education systems outside of Orange County,” Capistrano Unified trustee Anna Bryson told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt on his syndicated radio show Monday.

Born in South America, Bryson, a Republican, is in the middle of her second four-year term. She has already announced that she will run for state Assembly in 2014. 

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Education reform is one of her top priorities, she told Hewitt. She hopes to change the way schools are funded -- so that they're guaranteed their proper funding -- and to turn the tide of illiteracy in California, especially in places like Los Angeles Unified, she said.

In the 5-minute interview, however, she offered no concrete examples of how to accomplish these goals.

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Some students "can't do their own checkbook. How can they provide for a family? It's not enough to give free lunches to children," Bryson said. "You have to give them the freedom and discipline to achieve in a society that's like an absolute economic engine that's coming back to life in California."

The students are burdened by not having decent teachers, she said, going out of her way to say she was not referring to any faculty in her school district. 

"We are very blessed at Capistrano Unified. We have very extraordinary teachers. But not all districts and all cities are so blessed," Bryson told Hewitt.

She offered no solutions to ferret out bad teachers or encourage better ones into the profession.

These trends have Latino parents “very, very disturbed," Bryson said. "These are Democrats, many of them. They are looking for a different pathway for their children, and they have every right to have a good pathway. All children deserve that. It’s a civil right. All children deserve a good education.”

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