How does Spanish immersion work at FCPS?

[Anonymous]

How does Spanish immersion work at FCPS? Their website is clear as mud. If we are in boundary for an elementary school with Spanish immersion, are we automatically in? Or is it lottery ONLY? Are there whole school and strand programs? Specifically, we're looking at moving to Reston. We're in a Spanish immersion school in another district and don't want to lose that if/when we move. Thank you for any insights?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How does Spanish immersion work at FCPS? Their website is clear as mud. If we are in boundary for an elementary school with Spanish immersion, are we automatically in? Or is it lottery ONLY? Are there whole school and strand programs? Specifically, we're looking at moving to Reston. We're in a Spanish immersion school in another district and don't want to lose that if/when we move. Thank you for any insights?

In FCPS, the immersion lottery procedures vary from school to school. Some prioritize native speakers or in-boundary students, but I don’t believe there are any where the program is guaranteed to all in boundary students. Very often, you have a better shot as an in boundary student, because you are only competing for a spot against the limited number of in boundary students, while families out of boundary are competing with people from all over. It’s worth a call to to WL office to ask about the specific schools you are looking at. The policy for each school is information they share at the information sessions each winter. Maybe they can email you those slides. Best of luck.

[Anonymous]

Contact your specific school. For ours it's dual immersion so 50% are native Spanish speakers 50% English or another language. We are in boundary. The summer before kindergarten when we submitted the registration forms we indicated that we wanted to be in immersion. I think for our school or was first come first get in sort of thing.

[Anonymous]

It’s a lottery, even if it’s your base school. If you want in, you need to fill out the forms. You might not get in language immersion program, even at your base school. Not all students in the grade participate in language immersion.

If it’s your base school, you get transportation. If it’s not your base school, not all get transportation. Ask about guidelines for qualifying for transportation.

[Anonymous]

Our ES Spanish Immersion is filled up with mostly Hispanic Kids and 10% non Hispanic kids. (Title 1 School.) We have both Hispanic family friends and white family friends who said it's not overly beneficial to be in the program. It's just a program to put the kids who only speak Spanish. Yet they don't actually teach Spanish and the non-hispanic kids often request to leave the program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our ES Spanish Immersion is filled up with mostly Hispanic Kids and 10% non Hispanic kids. (Title 1 School.) We have both Hispanic family friends and white family friends who said it's not overly beneficial to be in the program. It's just a program to put the kids who only speak Spanish. Yet they don't actually teach Spanish and the non-hispanic kids often request to leave the program.

At our title 1 immersion school, it's only in the Spanish immersion program that there are any native English speakers. The non immersion classes are close to 100% ELL and mostly Spanish. Extremely happy with our experience so far.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our ES Spanish Immersion is filled up with mostly Hispanic Kids and 10% non Hispanic kids. (Title 1 School.) We have both Hispanic family friends and white family friends who said it's not overly beneficial to be in the program. It's just a program to put the kids who only speak Spanish. Yet they don't actually teach Spanish and the non-hispanic kids often request to leave the program.

In FCPS is to immerse the Spanish speakers students into the school system here. Is NOT to immerse the non Spanish speakers into Spanish