Carla Ranger, this afternoon, presented her proposal to eliminate the Spanish-speaking requirement for employment as a principal in DISD.

"Does it (the Spanish-speaking principal policy) need to be tweaked? Probably," said Jerome Garza. But Garza cautioned against throwing it out.

Ron Price one of the senior administrators needs to speak Spanish but not necessarily the principal. "That's not going to help one kid learn their A-B-C's better."

Nancy Bingham echoed Price's sentiments. "We have schools where over 50% of the students don't speak (English)."

Bingham offered an amendment that would compromise by requiring the principal, assistant principal, Dean or other senior administrator speak Spanish.

Leigh Ann Ellis agreed as did Edwin Flores.

When the conversation got back around to Ranger, she reminded the Board that the original intent of the policy was to increase "parental involvement."

Ranger asked the staff to prepare a report on the impact of Spanish-speaking principals with respect to parental involvement.

Superintendent Michael Hinojosa pointed out there were no metrics to measure parental involvement. "(Parental Involvement) might mean different things to different people."

Ranger pointed out, that being the case, the difficulty of measuring the success of the program in the first place.