Immersion upheaval: immersion schools are changing throughout the county
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Anonymous
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Current Rolling Terrace Spanish partial immersion parent here reporting out on the complete county mismanagement of an immediate change to NEXT school year for current immersion families:
Montgomery County announced tonight -- after several cryptic messages -- that Rolling Terrace will become a two-way immersion program in 2018-19, for all incoming Kindergarteners ONLY. All other existing immersion grades are moved out of the school (oh, you can stay in the RTES English program, if you want). Current K-2 immersion moves to William Tyler Page in the Northeast Consortium. Current 3 and 4th move to Burnt Mills. Families have to decide by February via a Notice of Intent form to accept or decline a seat. Hopefully they'll figure out regional bus stop transportation to be provided before requiring decisions. Multiple parents asked about why the immediate change, without parent consultation. "The Metis Report conversations meant the county talked to thousands of students, so it was actually made with a great deal of parent input." MCPS staff mentioned that they're changing/moving College Gardens as well. Here's the kicker: They told the teachers today also! So the teachers also need to switch schools, unless they want to compete to teach dual language Kindergarten at Rolling Terrace. I don't know if the immersion programs will survive this. French and Chinese immersion parents, please let report out on changes happening for you, but beware, if you have a cryptic meeting notice, it means your school program is likely moving next year and go to the meeting. |
Anonymous
| Don't remember which BOE meeting last year addressed this, but changes have been in the works for a while. Basically, the model they are moving to is multiple bilingual (2-way immersion) education schools in multiple languages. A couple new schools with Spanish got started this year, and they were going to examine the demographic/language data to identify likely locations for other languages like French and Chinese. What you are seeing may be part of this rearranging process (and also probably an opportunity to ease overcrowding somewhere.) |
Anonymous
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This is crazy, unless they are building a larger, newer Burnt Mills I can't see how they can possibly increase their enrollment. They've got portables now and are busting at the seams in a very old building that looks like it was built in the 60s. This is not good news. Why can't they just build something new instead of uprooting people and communities and disrupting routines. Oh, and Burnt Mills does not have bus service for its immersion program, so I can see some of kids not being able to continue with immersion because there's no transportation to this school.
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Anonymous
You are speculating. Has mcps discussed this kind change with communities? If mcps wants to start a two-way immersion gragram at K, why cannt they let the curren 1-5 finish in the same school? What is the rusg to move everyone out, to two different school? It almost sounds like mcps hates the families in current program in the school and wants they out immediately. |
Anonymous
| Wow! We would be going nuts! It seems like they are counting on a lot just dropping out. |
Anonymous
| Terrible for families with children in multiple grades. Chinese immersion was moved all together to a brand new school. That is an entirely different thing. |
Anonymous
| Other schools are also being made two-way immersion for K in 2018. So there are many families who don't particularly want an immersion school who will be getting one without being asked, and now looks like there are families who did want an immersion school who will be kicked out. I'm not asking for total school choice but parents have had zero input on this. It looks like they could change my local school to a STEM focus or arts focus or Russian immersion or anything and we would have no choice but to send our kid there or move. |
Anonymous
| Isn’t rolling Terrace basiclly an immersion by default due to location? Not sure they have the option to not have everything in Spanish |
Anonymous
No. The tragedy of RT has always been that the county is using a finite resource (bilingual accredited teachers) to benefit mostly native English speaking middle class kids. I'm sorry for the families currently in the program because it is a big change in a short amount of time, but this is almost certainly the right choice given the need to use resources wisely. |
Anonymous
| What is two-way immersion, and how is it different from what is done now? |
Anonymous
Which other schools are changing? |
Anonymous
Two way immersion actually treats both languages as equally desirable and equally worth learning. So ALL kids will receive instruction partially in Spanish and partially in English, and kids who are heritage speakers of either will gain proficiency in both. The research shows that it works best for quickly turning monolingual kids (either Spanish or English) into bilingual kids. |
Anonymous
You are arguing a completely separate issue. There are dozens of schools with the demographics of RT and they are not being turned into dual immersion. Why screw over parents who signed up for the program in good faith? |
Anonymous
Well....are there dozens of other schools that are: 1) Shockingly overcrowded; 2) Majority Hispanic; 3) Using bilingual teachers on native English speaking kids; and 4) Within 3 miles or so of yet another one-way immersion program? I mean, I get it. This is a lot of change and it is unusual for MCPS to make a change this quickly. But I assume there will still be busing? So it is an inconvenience for sure, but it is also probably best for the majority of kids at RT. |
Anonymous
More terrible logistics for another small specialty program in too big, vastly underserved MCPS. |