Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Last Tuesday three other parents from the San Francisco Mandarin Immersion Parents Council and I met with program administrator Kevin Chávez to discuss the San Francisco school district’s plans for Mandarin immersion in middle school.  We came armed with a list of questions, but the information he was providing quickly overtook our agenda.

For example, Kevin revealed that the current recommendation is to find a common middle school for the entire population of students from both schools, including all students from both general education and language programs.  Even more surprisingly, he said that because the new student assignment system is being rolled-out this year, we would learn the name of our designated middle school very shortly.  In fact, school board commissioner Rachel Norton reported that the district will publish draft “middle school feeder patterns” in just three weeks.

So facts on the ground are evolving quickly.  Parents who wish to be involved in the process will need to be active and engaged during these unfolding events.

Here are our notes from the meeting…

Attendees

Kevin Chávez (SFUSD), Renee Tan (Starr King Parent), Ascanio Piomelli (Starr King parent), Kellyn Dong (Jose Ortega parent), Scott Olson (Jose Ortega parent).

Kevin Chávez is the Dual Immersion / Special Education Supervisor, English Learner Support Services, Academics and Professional Development

Disclaimer

None of the concepts outlined below that Kevin shared with us are finalized.  The plan is to go through a process of community feedback where families from the different sites can give their input.  The district expects to gather this feedback and have a plan in place by November 2010.

Introduction

The school assignment process is changing dramatically for the 2011-2012 school year at all major entry levels (K, middle school, and high school). The Mandarin Immersion Parent Council met with Kevin Chavez to understand the process of selecting a middle school option for the Mandarin Immersion programs at Jose Ortega and Starr King, as well as getting some clarification on whether or not Chinese Immersion School at DeAvila could feed into the Mandarin Immersion program at the middle school level. Our presumption was that the two programs within each school would move to a common school and that the MIPC could have input into the process of deciding which middle school that would be. What became evident at the beginning of the meeting is that we came in with some incorrect presumptions. Below is the summary.

Middle School Assignment Priorities

Key Goals: Keeping Communities Together, Fostering Diverse Schools, and Avoiding Language Isolation

Kevin explained that School Board policy P5101 will guide the district through the Middle School assignment process which pays particular attention to maintaining (or creating) broadly diverse schools, socioeconomically, racially, etc.

Kevin said the District’s general goal is to keep all students from a given elementary school together as they move to middle school, so that communities formed in elementary school continue into middle school. He also said the Mandarin immersion programs in both Jose Ortega and Starr King are small, so the District is exploring the possibility of offering Mandarin immersion in only one middle school. Given these two facts, the current recommendation is for all programs (Gen-Ed and MI) at both Jose Ortega and Starr King to feed into the same middle school.  In other words, even though the schools are in different parts of the city, their common Mandarin programs would potentially link them for the purpose of middle school assignment. Kevin added that his team’s recommendation is also to prioritize avoiding “linguistic isolation,” by attempting to cluster multiple language pathways in a middle school.

Planning Deadlines, Opportunities for Input

If Jose Ortega and Starr King feed into the same middle school, then our middle school destiny will emerge sooner than we thought.  The feeder middle school that the District picks for Jose Ortega and Starr King for the 2010/2011 school year will also be our Mandarin immersion middle school in 2011/2012 and into the future. This means the District must define and advertise the feeder middle school patterns before the Enrollment Fair in November.

Kevin explained that the Special Assistant to the Superintendent, Orla O’Keefe, is one of the key facilitators involved with collecting community input into the new school assignment process for Superintendent Carlos Garcia. She has been working with assistant superintendants and other central administrators from EPC, ELSS, and Multilingual Education/World Languages in considering all language pathways:  Newcomer, Dual Immersion, Biliteracy, English Plus, etc. FLES (Foreign Language Elementary School) and world language programs have also been taken into consideration. These pathways & programs are identified in the Lau Plan (the District plan for serving English Learners) and the Multilingual Master Plan. The administrators’ input has been used to inform work around elementary to middle school feeders as related to the new Student Assignment Redesign system as they move ahead. Other programs, such as the International Baccalaureate (IB), have also been taken into consideration.

Kevin indicated that immediately after our meeting he was meeting with District colleagues to discuss a community input process for the language pathways overlay. He agreed that, if we remind him, he will share with us, or put us in touch with the appropriate person coordinating, whatever process is designed.

Finding a Middle School

Kevin indicated that as it decides which elementary schools will feed into which middle schools, the District will aim to “balance” a number of factors, including socio-economic and racial diversity, API scores, language pathways, other programs (e.g. International Baccalaureate, special ed, etc.), geographic proximity and transportation availability.

Another part of this process is considering existing middle school programs, and thinking about where to establish new programs.  Immersion programs exist at Marina, Francisco, Lick, Hoover, and Everett, with a “maintenance” program at Mann.  These middle school programs lack enough capacity so the district will be building more programs at more schools.

In order to avoid “linguistic isolation” by assigning schools with only one language pathway to a particular middle school, Kevin indicated that the District would prefer that other elementary schools assigned to a particular middle school also have a language program, either an immersion, biliteracy, or FLES program.  Depending on the size of the middle school that Jose Ortega and Starr King feed into, he mentioned that JOES and Starr King would possibly feed into a middle school with two elementary schools that have a Spanish language program. If a middle school would host more than one language program, the District could offer a third language option to students, and also increase the overall diversity of the student population.

We asked Kevin if he had any target in mind for the relative size of the language programs at a given middle school, in order to “avoid linguistic isolation.”  In other words, what percentage would be some sort of language pathway (i.e. Mandarin or Spanish immersion or a biliteracy program) and what percentage would be general education.  He did not share any particular targets (either in terms of absolute numbers of students or as a percentage of the middle school student body).

Unlikelihood of Combining with Programs from Cantonese Schools

Kevin was not encouraging about whether the CIS DeAvila middle school program would feed into the Mandarin Immersion Middle School program. He pointed out that while both West Portal and CIS DeAvila introduce Mandarin to their students starting in the primary grades, they only receive Mandarin academic instruction starting in upper grades. He has been informed by content specialists that by sixth grade it would not be possible to have them attend the same classes as the MI students given the current conditions.

What will “Middle School Language Immersion” Look Like?

The language immersion program will be at least two periods per day, or at least two classes taught in the target language.  Both Spanish immersion and Cantonese immersion currently teach Social Studies and Language Arts in the target language.  Middle schools vary between 6-8 classes/periods per day.  A big constraint in ramping up middle school language immersion is finding teachers with the right skill sets.  This is especially tricky in seventh and eighth grade where the district must hire teachers with single-subject teaching credentials who are also fluent in the target language. (This may not be the case when classes are “cored” at the middle school level. We need to investigate this further.) Teacher recruitment and retention is always an issue.

Next Steps

Wendy Cheong will be the primary contact for questions regarding the Mandarin immersion middle school program as she will be focusing on K-12 articulation.  Kevin will be her supervisor.  Moving forward we should work with Wendy to help address the particulars about the Mandarin program, including the middle school development piece.  Daisy Chan will also be involved to provide continuity from the work done last year, but her emphasis will be on the Cantonese programs.

We mentioned that some parents had wanted to meet with middle school principals.  Kevin was not sure this would be a productive activity.  There will be many factors used to determine which elementary schools feed into which middle schools.  In his opinion, conversations between particular parent groups and principals are probably not the best way to influence the process.

Kevin said that he or another district representative would be interested in attending a future MIPC MS committee meeting.

We will follow up with him on how our community will be able to share its input before decisions are finalized.