This paper examines the negotiations that occur in a specific educational setting when traditional student placement practices are challenged and redesigned in an effort to better meet the needs of English language learners. The settings for these negotiations is an elementary school where over 90 percent of the students are native English speakers and two-thirds of the English language learners are from Spanish speaking backgrounds and participate in a Spanish transitional bilingual education (TBE) "pull-out" program. As their English competence increases, the students are transitioned into an all-English program. There were disagreements among the regular classroom, English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL), and TBE teachers about where a given child belonged. The perspectives of each of these teachers is described in detail in order to understand the tensions created by the pull-out model of instruction. These perspectives were obtained through formal interviews, informal conversations, classroom observations, faculty meeting notes, and video tapes from ESL, TBE, grade level, and whole school contexts. Teachers, parents, and students were interviewed. It is concluded that a grade-level clustering model for instruction of TBE students would be the most effective option as it would provide for a more integrated learning experience and less fragmented day. It also affords greater opportunities for teacher collaboration. (Contains 13 references. (KFT)