Capo to Offer County’s First Chinese Language Program

Decked out in red, about 60 parents and their children from all around O.C. show up to urge support for the immersion program. Finding qualified teachers will be the biggest challenge, district staff say.

A Mandarin Chinese language program will be offered in the next school year at Capistrano Unified.

The school district’s board of trustees Monday voted 6-0 to forge ahead with the program that will teach students the most-spoken language in the world.

It will be the first program of its kind in Orange County, with as much as 80 percent of instruction in Mandarin, and trustees said they would like to see it attract students from outside the district.

“If there was just one skill I could give to my daughters, it would be to speak Mandarin Chinese fluently,” Leland Jay of Seal Beach told the board.

He and other parent supporters later said they would be willing to drive up to an hour to get to a Mandarin Chinese immersion program. About 60 parents attended the meeting to urge support of the program.

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