AUSTIN - Hereford and Dumas may be less than 100 miles apart, but when it comes to bilingual education teachers, the towns' school districts are worlds apart.

The Hereford Independent School District considers itself fortunate because even though its student population is 82 percent Hispanic and about one in four of those students is in a bilingual or English as a Second Language program, the district has enough teachers, bilingual/ESL director Yolanda Gavina said recently.

"Most of our teachers have been with us for years," said Gavina, who has been on and off with the district for about 30 years. "You can pretty much say they are homegrown. We have recruited other teachers from other districts but most have been with us for years now."

But in the Dumas ISD, where in its Cactus school alone, 99 percent of the pupils are Hispanic and most are children of recent immigrants, the district is always looking for bilingual teachers, said a frustrated assistant superintendent Mark Stroebel.

There are no homegrown bilingual education teachers and the district has a tough time recruiting in job fairs or when it advertises the positions.

"Right now we are trying to recruit (in South Texas)," Stroebel said recently. "We're trying to recruit offering a $2,000 signing bonus and $2,000 for staffing but no one seems to be interested. People think we are too far away."

The starting average salary for a rookie teacher is $34,500 a year. This means that someone just out of college or who switched careers could earn as much as $38,500 during the first year, Stroebel said. Still, for Dumas ISD, Bovina ISD and other geographically isolated districts with large immigrant populations, there are no takers.

Perennial problem

Rep. Roberto Alonzo, D-Dallas, said he has been hearing those laments for years. That's why session after session he files a bill that would increase the number of bilingual education teachers in Texas.

"Every child deserves a good education," Alonzo said. "And because we don't have enough bilingual teachers we believe that it might not be happening."

Alonzo and other bilingual education advocates say the state does not spend enough on such programs, despite the fact that the number of bilingual students keeps growing at a fast pace.

In this session he filed House Bill 238, which would allow the state to hire 10,000 more bilingual education teachers. Texas Education Agency officials did not respond to inquiries about how many bilingual education teachers the state has and how many more it needs.

However, in a bilingual education forum in Austin more than a year ago, TEA officials said that about 700,000 of the 4.5 million students in the state's public schools, or roughly 16 percent of the student population, are enrolled in bilingual education or ESL programs.

Alonzo's bill is one of about a half-dozen bilingual education bills that were filed this session. The filing period expired March 9 and now all the proposed legislation is awaiting their day in committee hearings, which will decide whether the bills should be sent to the entire Legislature for a debate and a vote.

Other bilingual-related bills were filed by Democratic Sens. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio, Eliot Shapleigh or El Paso and Judith Zaffirini of Laredo, as well as by Republican Reps. Linda Harper-Brown of Irving and Bill Zedler of Arlington.

Shapleigh's bill, for example, would offer dual-language education, half the day in Spanish and the other half in English. Advocates of this proposal say the objective is to make the students literate in both languages.

On the other side of the coin, Harper-Brown's bill would give school districts the option of English immersion programs, which right now are against the law, while Zedler's would do away with bilingual education.

However, Alonzo and other bilingual education advocates don't take the Harper-Brown and Zedler bills seriously because even many Republicans are against such legislation on grounds that they are divisive.

For instance, during the recent marathon budget bill debate in the House, Harper-Brown offered an amendment that would not allow children of legal immigrants to be enrolled in the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. A reporter wanted to ask her about her proposed defeated amendment and her English-immersion, bill but she was visibly upset and refused to comment.

Jesse Romero, a partner in the Austin-based firm of Haley, Romero & Winick, and a lobbyist whose mission is to secure more state funding for bilingual programs, said the root of the bilingual education problem is inadequate state funding.

The state has not increased the state funding for such programs since 1984, he said.

"So, here we are 23 years later and the funding for bilingual ed has remained the same since 1984," Romero said. "Clearly the demographics and the number of students would indicate that there is a dire need for more funding."

Since 1973, Texas public schools have been required to offer bilingual education if they have at least 20 students in a grade who are deficient in English. Ideally, under bilingual programs the children are first taught in their native language and gradually make the transition to English. English immersion programs, on the other hand, are only in English, and bilingual education advocates such as Romero say such programs don't work, as it was demonstrated in California, because other than English, students don't learn other subjects and fall behind in school.

The outlook

Luis Figueroa, an attorney for the San Antonio office of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a civil rights advocacy organization, said the frustration with the Texas bilingual program led MALDEF to sue the state last year.

The suit, filed in Dallas, alleges that the state has failed to monitor the quality of bilingual programs and consequently, immigrant students are failing the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test, better known as TAKS test, at unacceptably high rates.

"We are awaiting a ruling on our lawsuit before we decide what do next," Figueroa said. "But I can tell you this much, we will keep fighting this because it is clear that the state has failed our children."

For her part, Gavina said she hopes that despite the rapidly growing population in Hereford, the bilingual ed teachers in her district won't be tempted to leave and that when HISD needs to hire, as it occasionally does, teachers from other parts of the state will be interested in moving to her community because, besides competitive salaries, it's a great place to live and raise a family.