California's first Hmong charter school opens in Sacramento
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By Stephen Magagnini
smagagnini@sacbee.com Published: Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1B
Last Modified: Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010 - 9:46 am
Lee Thao chirped "dog … squirrel … snake!" as teacher Edna Vang-Xiong wrote the words in Hmong on the board Monday afternoon.
Thao, 10, and nine other other Hmong kids dazzled their fifth-grade classmates with their command of Hmong, a spoken language that's as old as the redwoods anchored on the Pocket school's front lawn.
The 209 elementary schoolkids who showed up Monday are part of a grand experiment: California's first Hmong public charter school, Yav Pem Suab (Preparing for the Future) Academy.
The school will run four days a week, Monday through Thursday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The kindergartners go home at 2 p.m., but the rest of the kids will get three enrichment classes each afternoon, including Vang-Xiong's Hmong language and literature class.
They also get art, music, drama, dance and P.E. classes in 45-minute servings.
Students and teachers at the academy, housed in the old Lisbon Elementary School on South Land Park Drive, are bursting with hope and excitement. A fresh poster read, "Think you can, work hard, get smart!" Teachers wore T-shirts emblazoned with the mantra, "Dream, believe, inspire, achieve!"
As the afternoon enrichment classes played out, Principal Vince Xiong gave the homeroom teachers the good news:
"No kids running off campus, no guns came onto campus, no parents were called, no students were sent to the office for problems," Xiong reported. "We didn't lose any kids, you guys all looked really poised."
Every teacher is expected to learn the names of each of the school's 236 students. The 27 kids who were absent the first day will get calls from their teachers.
Tong Vang showed up at 2 p.m. to pick up his son Aaron, who was wearing a green, red and yellow pasta necklace he'd made at kindergarten.
"I don't want him to lose his language. We speak Hmong at home," Vang said. "They also have music, art, P.E. that a lot of schools are getting rid of, and I want him to have that, too."
At least 85 percent of the school's students are Hmong with roots in Laos, Xiong said, but there are also African Americans, Chinese Americans, Latinos, Afghans and several white students.
One African American fifth-grader, Akaylah Abdul-Ali, gave the first day a thumbs-up. "My teacher lets you do a lot of activities and she's fun," Akaylah said of homeroom instructor Celia Idrogo.
"It was the best," added classmate Seheira King. "We were doing verbs and nouns, and we get art and get to learn another language."
The Hmong written language, devised by a French missionary in the 1950s, is not in wide use, even in Sacramento's 25,000-member Hmong community.
But some of the kids, like Lee Thao, already know how to read it and will be expected to coach their non-Hmong classmates. It's a role reversal for many Hmong refugeees who arrived in Sacramento from Thai refugee camps unable to read, write or speak English.
Lee told her classmates that her Hmong name is Mai Lee, "and I know how to make rice!"
She also knew the words for dog in white Hmong and blue Hmong (two different but mutually intelligible branches of the Hmong languge): Day (written dev) and Ow (written aub). The other Hmong kids got into the spirit. "Toutelay is my Hmong name," declared Brandon Vue.
For more information on the new school, call (916) 433-5057, or go to
www.ypsacharte r.orgKCRA: New Hmong school opens in Sacramento
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