Sacramento City district board approves charter for Hmong academy

Sacramento City Unified School District trustees on Thursday night voted unanimously to approve a charter that would focus on teaching Hmong children.

Proponents of the Yav Pem Suab Academy said the school will recruit all students, as required by law, and will focus on Hmong culture and language instead of the typical foreign languages of Spanish and French.

Educators pushing the charter say Hmong children have fallen through the cracks at regular public schools for too long.

Hmong students in the Sacramento City Unified School District had the lowest scores - collectively - of all the district's ethnic groups on the English language arts section of standardized tests last year and the year before.

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