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Señora Candi Ellis knows the students in her Spanish classes have a long way to go from reciting "buenos das" to translating "Don Quixote."

Still, Ellis said she believes new Spanish classes at Oak Hill Elementary will give students an edge in preparing for the more challenging lessons they'll face in middle and high school.

"There's been lots of excitement (about the classes)," said Ellis, who transferred to Oak Hill from a Rockingham County high school this summer. "These students have been anticipating this."

Oak Hill is one of 18 elementary schools to add Spanish classes this year as part of an effort to increase the number of bilingual and biliterate students graduating from Guilford County Schools. District officials hired Spanish teachers at schools that feed into middle and high schools with International Baccalaureate programs, which require students to study a foreign language.

The expansion has come at a cost; most affected schools had to cut the number of arts and music classes in half to help pay for the Spanish program. For example, some schools will offer one semester each of art and music instead of two.

As a result, those teachers are having to split their time between more schools, teaching their subjects to a group of students for about four months out of the year.

Arts and music teachers say they feel slighted, especially after the district decided earlier this year to cut back on classes in middle schools to expand reading and math instruction. The district also eliminated an arts coordinator position to help balance its 2007-08 budget.

Juli Parker , a band director at Lincoln Academy, said she worries the cutback could reduce the number of students qualifying for county and state performances. For example, Guilford County band students held 16 of 176 available chairs in the middle school district band last year compared to 38 seats in 1995, she said.

"I don't feel like we are serving or having students in as big a county as ours go for these honors as much as we should," said Parker, who complained to school board members at an August meeting.

Sandy Douglas , who is teaching music at Oak Hill and Archer elementary schools this fall, said students there will miss out on half of that year's curriculum, including learning tone bar and orchestral instruments and singing spirituals such as "Free at Last" and "Harriet Tubman" during Black History Month.

"We have an entire N.C. Course of Study, and it can't be taught in half a year," Douglas said. "It's impossible."

School officials have heard complaints from the teachers before. Last year, the district extended an olive branch to the specialists by agreeing to hear a project team's recommendations for improving the teachers' working conditions. Among the requests: adequate planning time, less traveling between schools and only five to six classes a day.

The district agreed to limit classes to no more than seven per day and promised more transition time between classes. Principals also were told to give academic and so-called "encore" teachers equal planning time and duties.

Teachers have other questions: How will fourth- and fifth-grade students who don't have a music class prepare for the all-county chorus and spring trips to the symphony and opera? Who will handle the responsibilities of the former arts coordinator, including developing an annual budget of supplies and review programs?

Neither have kinks been worked out of the Spanish programs. Ellis said she has spent more than $700 of her own money outfitting her classroom with supplies and still awaits district funds for dictionaries, games and other materials.

Gisela Hood , the district's world languages specialist, said central officers are still deciding how to evaluate student proficiency in elementary schools to make sure they can handle upper-level course work.

"In elementary it's always very difficult," Hood said. "How do you test a kindergartner? How do you test a first-grader? We have a lot of work to do."

Despite the trade-offs, schools still welcome the Spanish classes. Principals say they are making up for missing classes by having math and reading teachers include music and art in their lessons. The district also has reassigned duties of the arts coordinator to other employees and offered a stipend to teachers who can help coordinate the visit to the Greensboro Orchestra and other activities.

Tony Padilla Sevilla , president of the Oak Hill parent-teacher association, said Latino parents appreciate efforts to validate their culture and help children speak and write in two languages.

"If you can speak Spanish and speak English, you have more opportunity for different things," he said.

Contact Morgan Josey Glover at 373-7078 or mjosey

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