First in a series
She has become the Most Mentioned Woman in Culver City the last two weeks. No one can remember the last kind mention of her – because possibly there weren’t any.
Without a trial, she has been converted into a villain.
All parents who have children in school today or have had in the last 10 years are familiar by now with the name Debbie Hamme. They can tell you she is President of the formerly obscure ACE union, the Assn. of Classified Employees, condemned by hundreds of parents for taking steps toward ultimately unionizing 20 specialized, parent-funded teaching aides at El Marino Language School.
She will not be at tonight’s 7 o’clock School Board meeting in the normally spacious Council Chambers. The reason is not a mystery.
Background
Starting at the beginning, Ms. Hamme told the newspaper that until lately, she had been unaware of ALLEM, the El Marino booster club, Advocates for Learning Language, El Marino.
“We never knew what the ALLEM program was, quite honestly,” Ms. Hamme said. “It has been in existence for 26 years, allegedly. I have been with the School District 17 years, and I never knew it existed until people started talking about it recently,” meaning four months ago.
“Last October when the booster club at Lin Howe (School) wanted to hire personnel to work in the classroom, that issue actually was brought to me,” Ms. Hamme said. “The issue was brought to me by (Leslie Lockhart, the District’s Human Resources director).
A Little Advice
“Our feeling was if these people did exactly what our bargaining unit did, they would have to be brought into our unit. Or at least given the opportunity to join if they wanted to. It was negotiated from that point.
“I had a couple different conversations with the gentleman who is the head of the Lin Howe booster club. We talked about how we would make this happen. He said, ‘We don’t have a problem with any of this. But we want you to make sure the same thing is done at El Marino.’”
How similar are the two programs? Ms. Hamme was asked.
“The parents at El Marino will tell you what their instructional assistants are doing is different from what every other instructional assistant does in the District,” she said.
“They are not doing strictly language. When that program began, apparently, these people were hired to model the target language, which, to the District, meant (the students) were standing up in front of the class and having a formal conversation with the teacher in the target language so they could hear the difference between how language takes place between two adults. Then they would model how conversation takes place between adult and child because you use a less formal tense in your verb for the child than you do with an adult.
“They were modeling language for that reason, to hear the difference between adult and child, and adults to adults language.
“They also felt it was important for them to hear appropriate accents.
“I understand all of that,” Ms. Hamme said. “That is not in question.
“At the time the immersion program began, with Spanish only, they had teachers in some classrooms who were not bilingual. It was certainly necessary to have somebody in the classroom who spoke the target language. That way you had the adjuncts (teacher aides) modeling the target language.
“We understand that.
“But now they are helping children who may be struggling with something. And they are working with children in small groups. They are helping children with homework or other assignments. That is exactly what my unit members do.”
(To be continued)
