French immersion at Stokes

[Anonymous]

^^ are these for the current Pre-schoolers? Are there any native West African francophones in Pre-k now?

[Anonymous]

It seems to me that each grade has a few kids whose parents are native speakers (which does NOT mean the children themselves speak it fluently-- just that they have some background). I think there are three in my kid's class. There's one kid with French parents from France, one West African family, and one family from the islands.

And as PP said, there are several French teachers who are from West Africa. So the African neighbor has nothing to worry about.

[Anonymous]

What's the parent involvement like and do they translate meetings into French and Spanish?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good or bad, the French program is the only Charter school game in town. There is a need for more--so where are the "Harricots Verts"?

Good luck getting West African/Caribbean francophones to send their kids to a vegetable school.

WIS itself struggles to get and keep fully bilingual and bi-literate francophone families when there are options in the 'burbs.

[Anonymous]

What are those options in the burbs. BTW Haricots Verts was a working title. The group died out, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's the parent involvement like and do they translate meetings into French and Spanish?

Spanish is available upon request. I don't think there are any French-speaking families who don't speak English. I've never seen anything translated into French for parents' benefit.

[Anonymous]

What about being able to transfer from French to Spanish? Can people actually do this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about being able to transfer from French to Spanish? Can people actually do this?

Please DON'T. Most people want Spanish, but will take a French space in hopes of having their child switch in a year or two. Very annoying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about being able to transfer from French to Spanish? Can people actually do this?

Yes, lots of kids, especially native Spanish speakers, switch over as space becomes available.

I'm of two minds on it: I get that those families want to reinforce their own heritage, but I think that the value of a third language is huge, and it's a little sad to see the cohort being broken up. I heard one parent say recently that they went from 8 native Spanish speakers in their K French class down to 1 by 3rd grade. Seems a little short-sighted.

[Anonymous]

Why is there attrition on the Spanish side for there to be space for the Latin kids that move to Spanish?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is there attrition on the Spanish side for there to be space for the Latin kids that move to Spanish?

The usual-- people move away, or move kids to the school their sibling is in, or move kids to a school closer to home. I know of two families who are withdrawing their child for reason #2-- one kid got in to one school, the other got in to Stokes, and when they got a sibling-preference spot at the other school, they made the switch for convenience.