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Citizens for Limited Taxation

As of 2005, 111 SPED students are also bilingual.

The 163 students that are tuitioned out costs the taxpayers a total of $5,142,189 or $31,547 per student per year.

Bilingual Student Headcounts by School

Framingham Schools has 1,898 students who are experiencing difficulty with english or are SPED students. That's 23% of the student population.

Description Blocks Barbieri Brophy Dunning Hemenway McCarthy Potter Road Stapleton Wilson Cameron Fuller Walsh High School Alt. High School Total
Standard 120 224 317 454 494 426 260 426 296 500 524 448 1783 93 6365
2-way bilingual english   172 42                 36 41   291
2-way bilingual spanish 10 179 32                 48 25   294
Bilingual portuguese 12           100   64   39   18   233
Bilingual spanish     64               22   11   97
Sheltered English/Portuguese             82   90   62   54   288
Sheltered English/Spanish     64               62   16   142
ESL 13 2   54   38         20 68 23   218
SPED .4   43       45   13   23 41       165
SPED .8 7                           7
Tuitioned OUT                             163
Total 162 620 519 508 494 509 442 439 465 523 770 600 1971 93 8263

My opinion of bilingual education is that there should not be any.  If you are an immigrant and you can't speak English, you should learn how to do so in a hurry.  You have chosen to move to an English speaking country.  The English language is what holds us together as a people.   We should never be advocating teaching students to continue speaking their native language.  Full English immersion is the only option we should consider, immaterial of any asinine state laws.  We are teaching them to be residents of our town.  The spoken and written language in Framingham for the last three hundred (300) years has been English.

I do not see Portuguese, Spanish or Swahili as a better alternative to English.  Do you?

As of the November 6, 2002 election, english immersion is now the law. We should be able to save quite a bit by getting rid of Portuguese teachers.

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