Reply to Asking for Advice - Rejection from Oyster-Adams Preschool

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[quote=Anonymous][/quote] I agree on the nanny thing.  The point of wanting a certain percentage of Spanish dominant kids is that those kids will bring continuing Spanish fluency to the school.  What happens when the kid ages out of the nanny and now no one at home speaks Spanish?  Or the kid is now in school for most of the day and spends little time with that nanny?   And frankly,  I think it's BS that wealthier parents would be able to essentially buy their way in by hiring a Spanish-speaking nanny.  I don't blame them for wanting to screen that out.  OP's case seems unusual, in that the kid really does have a real connection to Spanish language.  If I were OP, I'd contact the school and DCPS, explain the situation, and seek redress that way.  [/quote]

I do see the point of screening the nanny-kids out, as you say, though just two points: (1) Even kids from Spanish-speaking households tend to eventually become English dominant, because they live in this country and eventually will and should become English-dominant in order to function well here. I come from an immigrant household and have seen this happen in myself, as well as in friends who immigrated here as children and refuse to speak anything but English to their parents, though they understand the native language when spoken to. However, I take the point that those kids will bring the benefit of continued input and practice from home; (2) such screening may walk precariously close to a national origin preference, at least in effect. Which might be okay and justifiable, but I would prefer that DCPS say that out loud (and I can't imagine that they will) and be prepared to justify that, possibly in court.

And apart from Oyster, I wish DCPS would consider a middle road for foreign language learning between immersion requiring a critical mass of native speakers (that, in Oyster's case, can lead to confusion and discord) and 45-minutes-a-week foreign language instruction that seems to be the norm (too little). Something like, perhaps, 45 minutes every day at least. As of now, that frequency of instruction happens starting in middle school, but little kids learn language best.[/quote]

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