It’s good news for parents: the dual immersion program is officially under way for the 2012-2013 school year.
Confirmed by Hilaria Bauer, who spearheaded the three community informational meetings that began in January, dual-immersion will teach Morgan Hill Unified School District children in both English and Spanish, making them bi-lingual and ‘bi-literate.’
Although Bauer made clear that the details are not yet confirmed, she did share that the program will either be its own school or a school within a school.
“Once we have the numbers, that’s the key to begin to see what is coming. That is our number one challenge,” she said.
Those numbers the district is looking for is the final count of interested parents and their students that will confirm their child’s date of birth, and their interest in starting with the program next school year.
Bauer and her team are busy calling and emailing parents of those that they have not yet heard back from. On the district’s website, an announcement states that parents who filled out a questionnaire at one of the community informational meetings, should confirm their child’s DOB to see if their child qualifies for the dual-immersion program.
Students who are eligible are those that would be either in kindergarten or first grade for the 2012-13 school year. They currently must have a birth date of Nov. 1, 2007 to qualify for kindergarten in the district.
The program originally needed 90 interested students to start a school. Currently, the district is just shy of the magic number by 30 people. If they do not reach that number, the district is likely to have a school within a school program. No site has yet been determined, or details of how the program would work. Confirmed however, even with 60 students, they have enough to start one kinder class and one first grade class.
“We’re working as fast as we can,” Bauer said.
Board trustee’s weighed in on this new program, including Kathy Sullivan who attended two of the three community informational meetings. She said she saw the enthusiasm from parents for this type of program and would “love us to have this option to offer all our students.”
“We have to be able to offer more choices if we are going to be able to survive,” said Sullivan via email on Monday. “I would love to see more enhancement programs of all kinds offered in every school, but that is unrealistic under the fiscal restraints in the entire State. I worry about spreading staff out too thin, but I am encouraged by their enthusiasm to make this happen. It does seem better to try to keep trying for excellent and innovative choices for our students and parents.”
Board vice-president Don Moody similarly thought the program would be beneficial for MHUSD.
“I think that we need to listen to what our educational community wants and try to find some learning opportunities that will appeal to all the families in town,” Moody said. “If there’s people in Morgan Hill interested in dual immersion they shouldn’t have to go to Gilroy or San Jose to find that. And the key of course, is getting enough interested families.”
Bauer hopes to start confirming more information by early March.
At the first community meeting in Jan. held at Nordstrom Elementary, Bauer told families of the commitment a dual language program takes from family members.
Teachers would have to be CLAD certified, meaning they would have to be able to teach in both Spanish and English. At the time, Bauer alluded to assessing current teachers already working within the district to avoid hiring new ones.
Any program would still follow the districts current 29 to 1 student to teacher ratio.
Call 201-6075 if you are a parent who received a call from the district about the dual-immersion program.
