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Parents and students urge Long Beach Unified to keep Stevens Middle School dual‑immersion program
Summary
At a Long Beach Unified School District board meeting, seven speakers urged the board to keep the dual‑immersion program at Stevens Middle School rather than consolidating it to a single site, citing transportation barriers, equity concerns and requests for data on attrition and costs.
Dozens of parents, students and community members told the Long Beach Unified School District board that moving the district's dual‑immersion (DI) middle school strand to a single central campus would create barriers to access for Westside families.
"Every student should have the opportunity to participate in this program that enriches their education without transportation or location becoming a barrier," parent Crystal Ramirez told the board, asking that the DI strand remain at Stevens Middle School and receive the resources needed to continue there. Ramirez said her daughter, an incoming seventh grader, has been in the DI pathway since Webster Elementary.
Student speakers made the stakes personal. "Since DI will be getting moved to Hoover, I'm forced to drop the program because I will no longer have any kind of transportation option," Sophia Grace Kelly Ramirez said, describing how the change would affect her ability to continue in the program.
Other parents and students repeated concerns about equity and community ties. Ruby Martinez, a sixth grader enrolled in dual enrollment courses, said Stevens has been a supportive environment that has helped her bilingual skills and academic growth. Mabel Martinez, a Westside parent and community advocate, warned that moving the program would take high‑performing students out of neighborhood schools. Several speakers urged the district to create "pathways" — multiple DI strands across middle schools — rather than relying on a single site.
Ines Layton, who identifies herself as a parent and educator, asked the board to provide an analysis of (1) the attrition rate of DI students from fifth to sixth grade attributable to transportation barriers and (2) a comparison of the cost and sustainability of a single‑site DI model versus multiple pathway strands. Tia Hart, another parent, said she mapped public transit to Hoover and found a 55‑minute trip with several transfers, which she called "too much for the children" and not equitable for working families.
Speakers repeatedly named Webster, Lafayette and Chavez elementary schools as neighborhood DI feeders and said consolidating the middle school strand at Hoover (or Keller) would reduce access for West Long Beach families. Parents requested that Stevens remain a DI site to preserve a community pathway and to allow the program time to mature.
The board took the public comment and then recessed into closed session. The transcript of this meeting does not record a board decision on the Stevens DI consolidation; speakers asked the board to reconsider and requested the specific analyses described above. The board did not state a timeline for responding to those requests during the portion of the meeting published in the transcript.
