The West County Mandarin School in Richmond, Calif. is an interesting case. The West Contra Costa Unified School District (north of Berkeley) started the program in part to forestall a charter school being created. Parents in the district, and nearby, had asked for a Mandarin immersion program but the districts hadn’t wanted to do one. Then a group started working on creating a charter (I’m not clear on how far that effort actually got but it was certainly being discussed) and that was enough to push the District to create a new, whole-school program.

The other issue is that Richmond is a city that’s historically been relatively low income due to many historic factors and no small degree of racism. With the enormous rise in tech jobs in the San Francisco Bay area, and the resulting lack of housing, we’re seeing middle and upper-middle class families moving into areas that were previously more working class. And of course working class families are being pushed even further out in part because the Bay area is basically opposed to building more housing, but that’s a different blog.

This means the make up of families in Richmond is changing. One shift has been an increase in the number of Asian-American and Chinese-American families, as well as more middle and upper-middle class families moving in. I believe the district realized that it needed to create programs that appealed to these families to make them stay in the district and not leave for charters or private schools. I haven’t had anyone in the District itself tell me that, but a few families have made that suggestion.

What is always true is that the more students a school district has, the more funding they get. No district wants to lose students and no district wants to have an ever-diminishing percentage of the children in its attendance area going to its schools. (Well, except for San Francisco Unified, but that’s really a different blog.)

So the city of Richmond, Calif. has gotten a school with three kindergarten classes, which is pretty impressive for a new program. Families are staying in the district and in the public schools. And kids are learning Mandarin. Not only that, but as part of the District’s commitment to ensuring equitable access to this school, 50% of the seats are reserved for students who are either low income, English learners or foster youth.

I’d love to hear from any families in the program about how it’s going, feel free to email me. I’ve met the principal twice and he seemed quite impressive, so hopefully it’s going well. Here’s an interview with him from the District’s website about the program.

Contra Costa’s new Mandarin dual-immersion school equals uncertainty for adult-ed programs in district