Thu, Feb 28, 2008 (2:09 a.m.)

A relatively minor conflict last year between an Esmeralda County School District bus driver and two Hispanic high school students led to a rule banning Spanish from being spoken either at school or on the buses.

The bus driver’s response to the conflict had been to complain to the district superintendent that the two students began speaking to each other in Spanish, which he didn’t understand. The superintendent, Robert Aumaugher, followed up by telling parents their children should speak only English.

Suddenly the conflict wasn’t so minor anymore, because the state and national offices of the American Civil Liberties Union told the superintendent the rule was unconstitutional.

The issue is important because free speech, a constitutional right, is involved. After Las Vegas Sun reporter Timothy Pratt wrote about the superintendent’s action in December, we sided with the ACLU in opposition to English-only policies.

The bus driver who brought the complaint takes about 30 students from Dyer, on the California border about 170 miles northwest of Las Vegas, to the nearest high school — in Tonopah, about a 70-mile drive.

The superintendent faced limited options because, with Dyer being such a small community, if the bus driver should quit there is no one to take his place.

Fortunately, the district reacted reasonably after it entered a dialogue with the ACLU. As Pratt reported Saturday, the ACLU and the district have worked out a compromise.

While speaking Spanish is no longer forbidden, students will be encouraged to speak English during the bus ride’s first 45 minutes, which is an academic period supervised by a tutor.

The compromise works because it protects the students’ free-speech rights while helping them learn English, a skill that can only help them after they leave school.