Motion asks judge to rule that ELL funding is inadequate

Arizona is imposing costly mandates on instruction of students learning English but providing inadequate funding that gives no additional money to districts that together have more than 75,000 of those students, a court motion filed Friday said.

The motion filed by lawyers for plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the adequacy of English Language Learning programs for 138,000 Arizona students asked a federal judge to order the state to provide adequate funding and prohibit it from implementing the mandates in the meantime.

The class-action lawsuit originally filed in 1982 on behalf of parents and students in Nogales Unified School District led to court orders that prompted the Legislature to revamp English Language Learning programs with a 2006 law and to boost state funding by $40.6 million under an appropriation approved this year.

The 2006 law's mandates center on a requirement that districts starting next fall use instruction models approved by the state.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said he will urge Collins to deny the motion and that school districts should continue to prepare to implement the instructional models.

``We've got very detailed records to support our position,'' he said.

The models require daily four-hour English immersion instructional periods for ELL students and specify maximum class sizes, and the motion said schools districts will have to hire more teachers and incur other costs to comply with the mandates.

Districts already receive ELL funding from the state that's several times less than their actual costs, and that problem is aggravated because the 2006 law imposes a funding formula that deducts some funding received by many districts so that they get no additional money, the motion said.

More than 30 districts, including inner-city ones with many ELL students, get no additional state funding but together have more than 75,000 students, the motion said.

The four-hour immersion periods for ELL students ``are going to be very important to their academic success and their future lives and to want to suspend that shows that he doesn't really care about students,'' Horne said, referring to lead plaintiffs attorney Tim Hogan.

Horne defended the 2006 law and his department's implementation of its funding mandates.

Federal courts have signed off on key aspects of the law and the state is not implementing two provisions that were ruled to violate federal law, Horne said.

A separate motion filed on behalf of the plaintiffs asked U.S. District Judge Raner C. Collins to decide the issue quickly.

That motion said ``there is already a teacher shortage both in Arizona and nationally and hiring a significant number of new teachers presents practical problems that may be insurmountable with the new school year only three months away.''