SALEM - The Salem-Keizer School District has been cited for violations of state and federal law in its bilingual-education program, including asking students and parents to document that they were legal residents.

The citatations were a result of monitoring by the state Department of Education, required by federal law.

Assistant Superintendent Glenn Gelbrich said the report confirmed what the district learned from a consultant who studied the program over three years.

“It just affirms that we're going in the right direction,” Gelbrich said.

District officials said that this summer the district trained its bilingual teachers in English language development and now has all the students in those courses. But the program still was getting off the ground when investigators visited in September, said Ron Speck, the district's bilingual coordinator.

Among other problems the state department cited: students kept in the program after they became proficient in English, no process for monitoring former bilingual students and high school students not getting meaningful subject course work that would lead to graduation.

The violations do not carry financial penalties, said Helen Maguire of the Oregon Department of Education.

Advocates for minority children said they complained about many of the violations for years.

“The leadership - from the board to the previous superintendent to the principals and the cabinet - everybody has been aware of this. Everybody was just hoping it was going to go away. It's just negligence,” said Eduardo Angulo, chairman of the Salem/Keizer Coalition for Equality.

He said the coalition tried for years to get parents who don't speak English involved in their children's schools, and then the schools began this year requiring volunteers to provide Social Security numbers, effectively shutting out those who don't have them.

“They just went and took the Latino parents out of being volunteers,” he said. “That was a big slap in the coalition's face.”