NEW STATE DIRECTOR FORESEES DEVELOPMENT OF EXEMPLARY PROGRAM

By Editor Ken Harvey

The personality of Washington’s new State Director for Migrant and Bilingual Programs reflects the contrast in his own life history.

The life of Dr. Alfonso R. Anaya began in the humble circumstances of a migrant child but evolved to make him one of the most highly respected educators in the country.

In similar contrast, this obviously intelligent, well-educated and successful man is self-deprecating, soft-spoken and approachable, lavishing praise on those around him. He claims to be shy but is articulate and confident in his ability to create a model migrant and bilingual educational program in Washington State.

His dry sense of humor leaves you wondering at times when he is joking and when he is serious.

His background makes Dr. Anaya an ideal state director, able to understand the needs of the migrant/bilingual program from nearly every perspective – student, teacher, bilingual director, principal and superintendent.

“My family was a true migrant family. We moved from state to state and worked from planting to pruning to harvesting – all of that for years,” he explains. “I didn’t stop doing that king of work until my freshman year in college. So I know their lifestyle. And, sadly, after thirty year conditions have not changed all that much.”

Yakima Valley was one of the places where his family worked the fields.

Anaya earned his bachelor’s degree in 1974 and his teaching credential in 1975 from the University of California, Davis. 

Dr. Anaya chose to be a bilingual teacher and work with students who were second-language learners, like he had been. Education for second-language learners when he was a child was not very formalized.

“I was one of those sink-or-swim kids that just picked it up,” he says.

He hoped to do better with students in his own classes.

“I did some things that helped, but it was frustrating because there was a lack of good curriculum materials and staff development,” and that situation has improved only marginally, says Dr. Anaya.

He also worked effectively with migrant and second-language parents.

“I have been successful in some of those programs, but I can see why a migrant parent would be hesitant to come forward and participate. Many of them are kind of shy and afraid,” Dr. Anaya explains.

By 1985 he had earned both his master’s degree in educational administration and his administrative credential from California State University in Sacramento.  His doctoral degree was conferred by the University of San Francisco in 1996.

Becoming a bilingual director, a principal and then one of the first Latino district superintendents in the state of California gave Dr. Anaya additional insights in funding, administration, staff development, and curriculum.

“I can see it from a bigger picture, how curriculum works, for example,” he says. “So, I’ve seen the whole thing.”

Dr. Anaya worked most recently as superintendent of schools for the Alum Rock School District, San José, Calif.  For six years he also served on the board of directors of the California Latino Superintendents’ Association and as its president, 2002-2004.  He was also a member of the board of directors for the California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE), 1999-2001.

For all his preparation, Dr. Anaya thought last year his education career was over when he retired from education.

“I had completed all my career goals for education and work,” he explains, “and I needed to spend time with my parents, who were ill at the time. I did spend some time with them at the end, but it was not enough time before they passed. My dad died December 26^th, and my mom had passed before that. And then I found myself for a few months with nothing much to do.”

Dr. Anaya thought he would enjoy having time to do all the things he had been postponing, like reading, traveling and golf. But he is also a workaholic.

“When you’re raised in a migrant family, you begin to work very young. So in my career I spent long hours in what I was doing with college and career. Then after my parents passed, I had a lot of free time on my hands. Golf is good, but not every day – especially if your golf game doesn’t come back like it used to,” Dr. Anaya says.

“I was ready to come back, but I didn’t want to do something I didn’t have a real interest in and a love for,” he says.

Dr. Anaya began developing a non-profit foundation in conjunction with a movie company to encourage Latino youths to pursue careers in education and the arts. Those are professions where there is a disproportionately low number of Latinos.

“When I was growing up and working as an educator, I saw big gaps preventing Latino students from get into new territory.  We don’t have a lot of Latinos out there as educators who can serve as models for students. They also are not represented in the arts. There are not very many Latinos who have their own TV shows, for example,” Dr. Anaya says.

In education there are more than 290 superintendents in Washington State, but only three or four are Latinos, he adds. In California there are 1,100 school districts and about 60 Latino superintendents.

“When I became superintendent there were only four of us,” he says.

He hopes his foundation can help him make a difference.

“The only way to change that is to go back and focus on students and on families early. The purpose of the foundation is to identify those children early in fourth or fifth grade, then sponsor them all the way through college,” Dr. Anaya says.

The new state director plans to continue developing the foundation on the side.

“Hopefully that will work out. If 10 years or 20 years down the road you can have more Latino people in education and the arts, you will have started filling in the gaps,” he says. “If we leave it for nature to take its course, it may never happen. Twenty years ago there were not that many Latino models in education and the arts, 10 years ago there were not that many and there are still not that many today.”

But the foundation was not a paid position nor a full-time volunteer endeavor, so Dr. Anaya began looking for other opportunities.

“Then this job became available and ignited my passion again because I love to work with bilingual parents and communities,” he says. “What’s easier for me here in Washington is that I can focus on these things – the migrant and second-language program development. I can help design and influence teacher training and those kinds of things.”

Dr. Anaya feels his background will help him develop a model migrant/bilingual program in Washington. He also looks forward to being an advocate for the program and work with OSPI officials and the state Legislature in related decision-making.

As soon as he began his job in April, however, he faced immediate budget cuts in the program.

“It is frustrating, but I’ve always been good when dealing with finance.  Over the next year or so, we’ll be projecting better and we’ll be doing better on how we design more productive systems that are not so dependent on economic swings,” Dr. Anaya says. “When you have cutbacks, it affects people, and that’s not good. I hope in the future we can plan better and project better.”

But even with a tighter budget, Dr. Anaya believes great progress can be made in the migrant/bilingual programs in Washington.

“We need to go back and redefine these programs clearly. There is some confusion on what programs are out there and how they can be most effective. My staff at OSPI needs to be united and consistent. We need to identify demonstration sites for pilot projects that demonstrate all the key components of effective education programs for English Language Learners and sustainable,” he says.

He wants to develop programs that will help Latino students do better on the statewide WASL exam and achieve grade-level expectations.

“We’ll be looking at all the current programs, whether they are dual-language or content ESL or transitional.  Whatever the program, we are going to go back and redefine them,” Dr. Anaya says. “There is a lot of confusion about dual-language, for example, but we have to have something that is consistent. That allows us at the state to come in and provide assistance because we know what the system is.”

He says his office will be rewriting guidelines according to what would be most effective for students.

“We need to make sure that programs connected to the graduation requirements. The highest accomplishment in K-12 education is a high school diploma, so we need to make sure that everything we do that is supplemental is tied to helping students be successful in achieving the diploma in four or five years, not too much different than the non-migrant or bilingual kids,” Dr. Anaya says.

He figures it will take him six months to study current systems and programs before he proposes any major changes. One positive thing is that Washington, with about 74,000 English language learners, has what he considers to be a more manageable number of students in the program than a state like California.

It will take about three years to develop exemplary programs and another couple of years to gather data to demonstrate the effectiveness of the programs.

“We should be able to develop an exemplary program over the next five years,” he says confidently. Around 2010-11, “we should be very competitive with the types of programs that guarantee success.”

With the new programs he hopes to develop more consistent funding to avoid future budgetary shortfalls.

In the meanwhile, says Dr. Anaya, “We need to focus the resources we have on the most critical areas. We should not waste any resources.”