{"id":408846,"date":"2026-07-23T01:58:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T01:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/408846\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T01:58:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T01:58:18","slug":"long-beach-parents-question-dual-immersion-plans-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/408846\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach parents question dual immersion plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

It currently takes Long Beach middle schooler Alison Sosa Reyes 20 minutes to get to Stephens Middle School, where she spends her days learning in English and Spanish. But once the Westside dual immersion program program moves to a campus more than four miles away, she\u2019ll have to wake up as early as 4 a.m. to get to school, she said.<\/p>\n

She is not alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Parents and students say they\u2019re facing impossible choices as the district consolidates its Westside and East Long Beach dual immersion middle school programs onto a different campus north of the city\u2019s airport. In interviews and at recent school board meetings, parents and students have urged Long Beach Unified to reconsider the consolidation, which is set to begin in the 2027-28 school year. The district says it\u2019s necessary to accommodate increasing demand for dual immersion. But parents and students say it may force some to lose their chance at a bilingual education \u2014 particularly those on the Westside facing long commutes on public transit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have stated that no student\u2019s future should be decided by their ZIP code or their family\u2019s circumstances,\u201d said Ruby Martinez, a dual immersion student at Stephens Middle School on the Westside, \u201cbut that\u2019s what is happening to us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"The school board listens to a Stephens Middle School supporter during the Long Beach Unified School District board meeting about the dual immersion program on Wednesday, July 15, 2026. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.<\/p>\n

One Westside parent of three said that it is not possible to make multiple round trips to the new campus (the former site of Hoover Middle School<\/a>) while balancing work and childcare. \u201cFamilies should not have to choose between continuing their children\u2019s education and having safe, reliable transportation,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If students choose to take public transportation, some will have to sit on city buses for hours every day to get to Hoover \u2014 a \u201chuge chunk of time,\u201d Stephens parent Tia Hart told the Long Beach Post.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She pointed out that Stephens students are performing well where they are. They improved in English, math and science over the last year, according to the California School Dashboard. And in 2024, Stephens was honored as a California Distinguished School<\/a>, the first time in 19 years a Westside school earned the honor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Taking away those opportunities from students in an underserved community on the Westside in \u201cnot an equitable situation,\u201d Hart said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Seventy-eight percent of students at Stephens are considered socioeconomically disadvantaged, according to the California School Dashboard<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Lillian Hart hugs her mother, Tia Hart, after Tia spoke at the Long Beach Unified School District board meeting about the dual language immersion program on Wednesday, July 15, 2026. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.<\/p>\n

Parents added that the Westside program, which exists alongside English-only grades, has not yet had a chance to grow. The dual immersion pathway began at Stephens this past school year, enrolling 30 students, the district\u2019s chief academic officer, Brian Moskovitz, said in a December board meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Keller Middle School, an entirely dual immersion campus in East Long Beach, enrolled 545 students last school year, according to state data. Forty-one percent of Keller students are considered socioeconomically disadvantaged.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As elementary dual immersion programs continue to expand, the district will not be able to accommodate the number of families who want their children to attend Keller, Moskovitz said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could continue to try to accommodate at Stephens,\u201d he said in December, \u201cbut we know that families are seeking the school-wide model.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet families who spoke with the Post said the nurturing staff and welcoming culture at Stephens is precisely what drew them there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thenera Bailey said her son is \u201cthriving\u201d in the Stephens dual immersion program, improving not only in Spanish, but in math, where he previously struggled. On the Stephens playground, Bailey\u2019s son speaks Spanish with students who are not in the dual immersion program, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of that comes from being a neighborhood school,\u201d which may be hard to replicate at the new, dual immersion-only campus, Bailey said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stephens parents have been posting flyers and speaking at board meetings in an effort to gain the attention of board members and district administrators, who they said left them out of the decision to end the program at Stephens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, former city councilmember Tonia Reyes Uranga sent an email to the district\u2019s new superintendent, David Zaid. Uranga raised questions about the district\u2019s decision-making process and expressed support for the parents requesting the program remain at Stephens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Zaid responded to say that the district will hold future meetings for families and community members to ask questions. In a statement to the Post, district spokesperson Eric Mitchell added that LBUSD \u201cremains committed to listening to families and acting on our values while keeping students at the center of every decision.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Crystal Ramirez said that the district\u2019s dual immersion taught her daughter, a rising seventh grader at Stephens, Spanish \u2014 \u201cthe only way she would communicate with her grandmother.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet because Ramirez doesn\u2019t have a car, she fears she\u2019ll be forced to take her daughter out of the program and that all the Spanish she learned will be lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It currently takes Long Beach middle schooler Alison Sosa Reyes 20 minutes to get to Stephens Middle School,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[163582,163583,74490,131,133,132,49733,6610,163584],"class_list":["post-408846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-dual-immersion","tag-keller-middle-school","tag-lbusd","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-long-beach-unified-school-district","tag-spanish","tag-stephens-middle-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}