Reply to CHARTERS MAY MERGE AT WALTER REED (The DC International School, IB Diploma Programme)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Maybe one option is for interested families and groups to start a Cantonese speaking charter.  There is enough demand I am sure to support a second school.  In SF immersion schools that I've heard of, they do Cantonese for the first several years and then switch (not sure if it is partial or full) to Mandarin in the fifth grade - with the goal of fluency in both Cantonese and Mandarin by the end.[/quote]

What a great idea.  Perhaps the "Cantonese speakers should get preference to YY" can take the lead and get exactly the school he/she wants complete with Chinese Cantonese/Mandarin speaking principal. [/quote]

You're being sarcastic, right?  That's fine.

It would be a great idea, in Rockville.  [b]Cantonese speakers have spoken to members of the charter board about the way YY operates (token bilingual representation, no understanding of the close relationship between dialects and Mandarin) and have been told that there wouldn't be enough interest from "other groups" to support a second Chinese school, which is true.  As you may know, the Hebrew immersion school got a charter mainly because religious AA subgroups, like the 7th Day Adventists, are interested in having their kids learn the language.[/b]  According to the 2010 US Census, there are a little over 5,000 residents of Chinese descent in DC.  Many are your typical new arrivals, young, single.  We're unusual in the DC Cantonese-speaking community because we intend to stay in the city in PS.  Most plan to move to MoCo, often for immersion schools there, where at least 1/3 of the kids are bilingual and partial immersion goes through 8th grade, and for a heritage language school in Rockville.  Thankfully, our IB school is among the best, and even includes other bilingual families.  The more I read on YY threads, the more staying away seems like the path to acceptance and peace of mind. [/quote]
I have a very difficult time believing that the charter board discouraged the founding of a Cantonese charter school.  Remember that the Hebrew immersion charter--which offers Modern, not Biblical, Hebrew--was approved at the very same meeting that rejected an Arabic immersion.  Actual demand for the language never came into the charter board debate (I'm willing to bet that DC has far more Muslims than Israelis and SDAs combined); instead the board supported the group that had a solid plan which could reasonably be expected to yield good CAS scores, and rejected the plan that appeared disorganized.  Reread one of the Hebrew school threads for a rehash for that debate.

I'm sure that the charter board would be thrilled to approve yet another well-organized school, no matter what its focus might be.  And consider this:  If the charter board opposed the creation of schools that would compete with each other, we wouldn't have so many Spanish immersion schools.  If it cared about having schools that served the bilingual populations that are here in DC, we'd already have Amharic and Tigrinya schools.[/quote]

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