This case study focuses on one primarily Latino public primary school in New Jersey that waived the state's bilingual education requirement and implemented a curricular alternative, comprised of bilingual and monolingual English classrooms. A corpus was generated from one-to-one interviews (N = 8) with administrators and teachers, as well as ethnographic observations during the course of two years. Data were then analysed using a critical discourse analysis. Findings reveal clear patterns between educators' overtly expressed language ideologies and their covert expression in the curricular alternative where (1) bilingual teaching was equated only in relation to the Latino students' purported limited English proficiency and (2) the belief that monolingual English instruction was to remedy students' so-called language gaps. Furthermore, different interpretations of the programme and even disagreements that the school actually held a bilingual programme type were observed among teachers and administrators. Considerations for equitable teaching practices are addressed in the discussion.