Illinois school district to suspend wildly popular Mandarin program

This photo shows a reading program at Cherokee Elementary School in Lake Forest. The District 67 board voted to stop offering a Mandarin immersion program to incoming kindergartners, and it has divided groups of parents. (Michael Walker, Chicago Tribune /September 23, 2002)

By Dan Waters, Tribune reporter1:41 p.m. CST, March 6, 2014

Nearly 100 parents packed into the Lake Forest School District 67 board room recently to express their frustration over the decision to eliminate a Mandarin Chinese language immersion program for incoming kindergartners.

The board of education voted unanimously at its last meeting to stop offering the program — which allows students to have half their day taught in Mandarin — to kindergartners, citing declining district enrollment and a division between those who take the program and those who don’t.

“You guys are so unbelievably happy with the program, and I know it,” Superintendent Michael Simeck said during a question-and answer-session for parents of students who participate in the immersion. “It is a dream. If we could make everybody in the school district as happy as you guys are with the program, we’d be killing it.”

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