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Parents Take Issue With French Plan

By Scott MacKeen
Staff Writer
5/20/10
A dispute between parents and school administrators over student placement in the French Immersion program erupted during an impromptu meeting at Milton High School.

About 30 parents of soon-to-be first-graders entering the French-based elementary program attended the May 13 meeting, with School Superintendent Mary Gormley and Assistant Superintendent John Phelan, who attempted to field concerns about placement issues.

Many were upset that their child will not have the choice of enrolling in French Immersion in the neighborhood school next year.

Under a new policy recently voted by the School Committee, French Immersion classes will be kept at or below 26 students. The French program – which students must enter in first grade – will continue to be housed in all four of the elementary schools in town. However, because of a large, incoming first-grade class of 341 students, school administrators chose a policy forcing some families to choose between the neighborhood school and the French option. The neighborhood school would not be ruled out if the English program – the less popular of the two elementary programs – were the choice, officials said when they first announced the new policy.

Due to the size of the incoming first-grade class, a lottery was held to determine which students would attend the neighborhood school for French Immersion next year.

First preference was given to students with a sibling already in that school.

The process resulted in 26 families who did not “win” the lottery. Some of the families, most of whom live in the Cunningham and Collicot school neighborhood, will have to go outside the school if they choose French.

Gormley said two additional French classes, one at Cunningham and one at Tucker – giving each school a total of two – will be formed to accommodate the extra students not selected through the lottery process. Collicot and Glover will continue to have two. Without the extra class at Cunningham, around 30 students living in that neighborhood would have to attend another school, the superintendent said.

“We’ve never had to move 30 French students before,” she said. “Obviously, it was impacting quite a few families.”

However, because the Cunningham and Collicot neighborhood will be most impacted by the new placement policy, parents wondered why Tucker was chosen to house the second additional French class.

Gormley said May 18 that only Tucker has room.

Collicot and Cunningham will each have two English classes. The other two schools will have one apiece.

At the May 11 meeting, Phelan said 20 of the 25 families not selected in the lottery live near the school complex on Edge Hill Road.

One parent, who requested that his name not be published, said parents were not told of the implications of the program choices this year.

“You should have had this meeting in January,” he said, asking, “Why not have the second [additional French] class at Cunningham or Collicot? You would take care of everyone in this room.”

Other parents said the lottery selection process was unfair because the long-standing policy of grandfathering incoming students into the same school as a sibling took precedent over random placement choice.

“Ninety percent of the spots [in the French program] were already taken up” before the lottery came into play, said Jessica Gillooly, of Canton Avenue.

Parents suggested that grandfathering be eliminated altogether and that there be a fair lottery for all families who choose the French program for their child.

Gormley said there is the option of staying in the neighborhood school if the English program is chosen.

“If you’re a family in the English [program], I’m not going to move you to make room for French Immersion,” she said.

“The district has limited resources, and limited space. We know every year we have to move children. With two programs comes a choice,” added Phelan.

Gormley said the new policy is only a slight change over the traditional one, which she said relied on GPS technology to determine placement by a family’s closeness to the school.

“This has occurred over the years,” the superintendent said. “They have student assignment plans in other communities.”

Gormley has extended the May 17 deadline for parents’ program choices to May 21.
(See more in the May 27 issue of the Times.)