ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two school districts located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, Long Beach Unified School District and Garden Grove Unified School District, which have overcome the obstacles and have long-established, successful heritage language programs for their Cambodian and Vietnamese students, respectively. The Khmer and Vietnamese languages are rarely taught in U. S. schools, despite the fact that speakers of these Southeast Asian languages have been in the U. S. for over 35 years and continue to make up a large percentage of students in many schools in California and around the country. Strong support from district and school administrators was essential to overcoming constraints associated with simply getting the Khmer HL program started. A wide range of constraints plus a lack of institutional support make it difficult to start and sustain HL programs in less commonly taught languages. Nonetheless, the challenges are not insurmountable.
