Members of Fuerza Latina will spend Sunday working the phones.

The Harvard Latino student group is trying to persuade voters in Jamaica Plain to vote “no” on a ballot question that would mandate English-only education for public school students who need to learn the language.

Many of these students currently attend bilingual programs that teach them English and other subjects in their native languages.

“A lot of people have had experience with bilingual education in the group and from their experience they’ve either seen why it’s important or why it’s necessary,” says Eileen Plaza ’03, who runs Fuerza’s community outreach. “This is something that really affects immigrants.”

They join an impassioned group across the state that has taken up arms against Question 2, which they say deny students the benefits of bilingual classrooms.

A recent statewide poll by the Boston Herald found that 63 percent of voters support the measure. But Cambridge has been a center of the opposition.

Debate on the question has long raged in the city. A year ago this month, Harvard hosted a debate between a Graduate School of Education professor and Silicon Valley millionaire Ron Unz, who proposed Question 2.

Unz launched similar initiatives that were passed in California and Arizona, arguing that it would more effectively make immigrants learn English.

“In about a year’s time, the people of Massachusetts will have a chance to junk this failed theory of bilingual education, which has never worked anywhere on a large scale in the United States of America, and switch to something that does work: intensive English immersion,” he said.

But critics counter that students who do not speak any English would have difficulty learning other subjects in an English-immersion situation and would be segregated from other students in their schools.

Unz’ opponent in the debate, Shattuck Professor of Education Catherine E. Snow, questioned the educational value of this approach.

“Learning English faster does not equal learning English better,” she said.

Educators in Cambridge have joined the opposition to Question 2, saying schools would have to be restructured if it passed. And that, they say, would have potentially disastrous effects in a system already in turmoil over drastic elementary school mergers planned for next year.

In total, the Cambridge Public Schools have six bilingual programs in five different languages—Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian, Mandarin Chinese and Korean—including the popular Amigos program for elementary students.

Currently 12 percent of the district’s high school students are enrolled in bilingual programs. Most of these students would not be affected by Question 2, because they already are proficient in English. But if the measure passes, no new students could enter these programs until they undergo at least one year of English immersion.