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Will French
Immersion Change?

By Scott MacKeen
Staff Writer
4/15/10
Officials in the school system are pondering a shakeup in the French Immersion program, which could result in some parents next year having to go outside their neighborhood school to enroll their child in the French-based program.

Since late last year, the World Language Committee, a group made up of top administrators, teachers and public school parents, has been studying ways to restructure the elementary school-based French program. The committee came about in the wake of last year’s override campaign, at which time some parents were asking that the elementary world language program be reassessed for potential savings.

Last week, that committee presented its findings to the School Committee. Included in PowerPoint presentation were four options to change the French Immersion program. According to the presentation, the following could occur:

• French Immersion classrooms would be consolidated down to two host elementary schools, requiring that some students be assigned outside of their neighborhood school. That measure would equal the savings of one full-time teacher equivalent.

• French Immersion classrooms would be separated by grade, with new classes of first-graders entering the French program assigned to a different school for the five-year period than the previous class. The second option would equal the savings of two full-time teacher equivalents.

• Classes would be capped by number of classrooms and seats per classroom in each school, as determined by the school superintendent. If more students signed up for French Immersion than seats were available, a lottery would take place to determine who gets in. There would be no savings.

• Classes would be capped, but no one would be denied an opportunity to enroll in French Immersion. If more students signed up than seats were available, auxiliary classes would be established to accommodate the remaining enrollees. The school superintendent would determine the location of the extra classrooms. The fourth option also would achieve no savings.

Assistant School Superintendent John Phelan, who co-chaired the committee with World Languages Director Gracie Burke, said the committee does not recommend one option but offers them all as measures to be studied.
“It was an interesting and at times difficult dialogue,” he said, adding that the committee met over a dozen times since November.

Phelan highlighted the strengths and weakness that were identified for each option for French Immersion. He admitted there could be “significant disruption” in assigning students to a school under the first two options, as families could have children in different schools. It would eliminate the so-called grandfathering practice of assigning students to the same school a sibling attends, something he said is “really complicating the school system.”

Although it would cause disruption in the first year, Phelan said the two first options would assure that French Immersion students remain in one elementary school throughout the program.
He said parents surveyed by the World Language Committee are overwhelmingly against capping the program or implementing a lottery system.

“They really didn’t want that. They wanted an equitable system,” he said.

However, the strengths of such a plan would be to stabilize class sizes and provide predictability in enrollment status, he said.

Part of the reason changes are being considered according to school officials is due to growing enrollment. The establishment of full-day kindergarten two years ago has caused enrollment to spike, and more parents are choosing the French program for their children. According to the presentation, this is due to the “total language immersion experience.”

“French has really grown over the past two years,” Phelan said.

In the meantime, the past few school budgets have resulted in cutbacks in Spanish being offered in the English program, including outright elimination of Spanish to first-graders. The committee found that adding Spanish back to the first-grade English program would increase the likelihood of families choosing the program, evening the balance of families choosing French over English. According to this year’s enrollment data, 58 percent of first-graders are in the French program and 42 percent are in English.