Reply to APS Elementary Location Working Group 4/12

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "APS Elementary Location Working Group 4/12"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]About moving the immersion schools close to the spanish speakers. You all make an assumption (as does the county) that the immigrants who live in the county's lower income housing are spanish speakers. A larger percentage are not.

My kid was at Claremont and a larger percentage of the spanish speakers were middle or upper middle class. They are educated professionals. That is why both Key and Claremont may be 50% spanish speakers, but not 50% free and reduced lunch. At a PTA meeting with a SB member, it was made very clear that if the SB wants more lower income families, it needs to educate those families about the options and why dual immersion is good for them. [b]Many immigrants DO NOT WANT IMMERSION. They want their kids to learn english asap. [/b]
[/quote]

It is honestly quite crazy to think that recent non-Spanish speaking immigrants would have ANY interest in foreign language immersion.

It is also quite crazy for a government/school district to contemplate moving several schools and their families  to cater to perceived preferred home choices of recent (?) immigrant populations. [/quote]

This is all about moving Key Immersion to make neighborhood seats. If it wasn't already option it would have been immediately ruled out by the corner of the county criteria applied to Jamestown, Tuckahoe, and Abingdon since there is no where else reasonably close to send Rosslyn and Courthouse. It wasn't an issue before because technically Key was a neighborhood school. The preferences of immigrant populations only comes into play because the program doesn't exist without Spanish speakers.[/quote]

And what happens if the Spanish speakers at those schools (immigrant or otherwise) decide they just want to go to school close to home and opt to withdraw from the immersion program?  What happens then?  Does APS have a wildly under-enrolled immersion program?

I don't think they can assume Spanish speakers will continue if they move it up to ATS or one of the NW schools.  Those can be hard to reach by public transit.  [/quote]

If people are only going because of the location, does the program need to exist? [/quote]

That's not the question. The question to ask is whether there are barriers to families choosing the option. For instance: if your family does not have a car, maybe you don't put in for a lottery school if it's too fat from your home. If the option is located in a neighborhood that has made it clear you are unwelcome, perhaps you don't want to send your kids there? [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics