The Mandarin immersion program at the school is also expanding, from one class per grade up to three per grade, beginning with its transitional Kindergarten next year.
Orion Alternative School in Redwood City recently garnered top honors for its programs, particularly the popular Mandarin-language immersion offering.
Orion nabbed a gold award from Bay Area Parent magazine for being among the best public or charter schools on the Peninsula for 2025. The award noted that Orion houses the Mandarin Immersion program for elementary students.
The magazine also listed Orion MI itself as taking gold this year for being among the best language-immersion schools in the region.
Note that San Francisco Unified says it’s going to create its own K-8 Mandarin immersion school, which parents have long advocated for. Read about that here.
San Francisco Chronicle, 8-26-2025
The San Francisco school board Tuesday unanimously rejected a parent-led effort to open a Mandarin immersion charter school in the city, angering families tired of waiting for the district to meet the demand for Chinese language programs.
The petition for the Dragon Gate Academy, according to district staff, failed to adhere to legal standards outlined by federal and state laws relating to qualified teachers and raised questions about how the school would address the needs of English learners and students with special needs.
In addition, district officials said the charter would have a negative financial and educational impact on city schools, siphoning students and state funding when the district is at risk of fiscal insolvency, which is a reason cited under state law to deny the charter.
San Francisco’s school board unanimously rejected a petition on Tuesday to open a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade Mandarin Immersion school in the city next fall, citing concerns with the parent-led effort’s educational model and the new school’s financial impact on the cash-strapped district.
After two hours of debate, the board voted 7-0 to deny the charter, following the recommendation of San Francisco Unified School District staff, which said they didn’t believe the plan was “workable.”
In addition to concerns about the educational model and feasibility of the plan, staff also wrote in a report earlier this month that the school could siphon away funding the district can’t stand to lose.
The Verona Area International School (VAIS) was recently named #7 in Wisconsin Elementary Schools and #2 in Wisconsin Charter Elementary Schools for 2025 by U.S. News & World Report.
VAIS is a public, tuition-free charter school founded in 2010 as a Chinese immersion school. Located at 400 N. Main St. in Verona, VAIS is part of the Verona Area School District (VASD) and serves approximately 120 kindergarten through fifth-grade students.
Utah is a leader in language immersion schools. This year the state boasted 344 elementary, middle or high schools offered dual language programming, which includes 172 in Spanish and 99 in Chinese. Other languages offered include French, Portuguese, German and Russian. While the schools referenced in the article below are losing students in French and Spanish, it’s an interesting trend to watch. Utah recently approved a measure that will establish an every-five-year evaluation of the state’s dual-language immersion programs.
BOUNTIFUL — Davis School District officials are evaluating the future of two dual-language immersion programs in district schools because of low participation.
School representatives cited falling participation in the French dual-language program at South Davis Junior High School in Bountiful and limited longevity among participants in the Spanish dual-language program at Lincoln Elementary in Layton. Possible outcomes once the studies are complete, according to school officials, include closure of the programs or consolidation with similar programming in other schools.
San Francisco’s Mandarin immersion landscape has increasingly one of a new private school opening every few years, as I wrote a few weeks ago. There are currently four, with one more coming. Parents pay up to $44,000 a year for these programs:
During that time, the San Francisco Unified School District has opened exactly two Mandarin immersion programs, one in 2006 and one in 2007. With space for no more than 66 incoming Kindergarten students each year.
Imagine my shock and thrill when the San Francisco Unified School District announced Wednesday that an anonymous benefactor was donating the money to create a new, comprehensive K–8 Mandarin Dual Language Immersion school.
Not only that, butSuperintendent Dr. Maria Su has gotten the incomparable Liana Szeto, to lead implementation of the program.
Szeto founded Alice Fong Yu K-8, the nation’s first whole-school Cantonese Immersion public school. [Note that San Francisco’s West Portal Elementary school began a strand Cantonese immersion program in 1984.]
Szeto recently retired after 30 years at Alice Fong Yu but will now come back to serve as a Special Advisor to the Superintendent starting in January 2026, the District said in a release.
“Szeto will lead the implementation of a new comprehensive K–8 Mandarin Dual Language Immersion school, as the district moves forward with its plans under her guidance.”
According to the San Francisco Examiner, the district hopes to launch the new school in by the 2027-28 school year.
I cannot express to you how exciting this is, and how amazing. Parents have spent almost two decades clamoring for more Mandarin immersion, five new private MI schools have opened/are planned to open and SFUSD just let all those families – and their lovely funding – slip through its fingers.
Kudos to Dr. Su, who is new to the district and who clearly is willing to lift her eyes up and see what families want and what will keep them in a district that just last year said “SFUSD’s enrollment has decreased by over 4,000 students since school year 2012-13. Demographic trends such as declining birth rates indicate that SFUSD will lose 4,600 additional students by 2032.“
Note that since 2010, 20 new private schools have opened in San Francisco (see the list below.) It’s not demographics, it’s supply and demand.
Thankfully, Dr. Su seems to be finally paying attention to demand, rather than dismissing parents who want something else.
The announcement comes as the school board was set to vote in two weeks on a petition to open a Chinese immersion charter school in San Francisco.
The district in its release says:
“This work is made possible through funding provided by Spark SF Public Schools, thanks to the generosity of a San Francisco Bay Area benefactor who believes deeply in the power of public education and the promise of multilingual learning. Their investment reflects a shared commitment to great public schools in San Francisco, by expanding opportunities for all students and strengthening language programs that leverage the strength of the city’s rich and diverse global populations.”
Let’s hope this isn’t a bait and switch but a real move at the District’s upper levels to meet parents where they are and create programs that draw families to the district.
How about French, SFUSD?
If I may be so bold, if I were the District I’d also be thinking about French.
About eight years ago a group of Francophone SFUSD parents, including families from Haiti and Africa, tried to convince the district that a French immersion school would be well received and would interest new families as well as being a draw for the District’s African and African American families.
San Francisco already has two private French immersion schools, the French-American International School, Lycée Français de San Francisco as well as the École Notre Dame des Victoire, a K-8 Catholic school that offers daily French instruction. .
At $41,000 a year, I expect there are more than a few parents who would love to go public, have their kids learn French and save a cool $400,000 over the course of a K – 8 education. (And only two SFUSD high schools out of 15 even offer French.)
I don’t envy these parents trying to do this in notoriously anti-charter San Francisco. Their point is a good one – there are long waiting lists for the city’s two public Mandarin immersion elementary schools (Starr King and Jose Ortega) but the school district won’t open more. SFUSD also doesn’t support the middle school program very strongly.
I’m told the new Superintendent of Public Schools says she sees language immersion programs as a way forward for the district. But unclear if that will translate into more support or new programs.
It’s very clear there is a demand. San Francisco has five private Mandarin immersion schools at this point. Parents are willing to pay up to $44,000 a year for these programs.
At the same time. SFUSD is struggling with a budget deficit, which more students would most certainly help with. District officials in the story say they’re supportive of expanding immersion, but that hasn’t always been the experience of families. This would be such an obvious way to bring lots of families into public schools – I wish SFUSD would make it happen. This doesn’t have to be a charter school but there seems little appetite for anything new in the district just now.
S.F. parents are trying to start first K-8 Mandarin immersion charter school. It won’t be easy
By Ko Lyn Cheang, The San Francisco Chronicle – May 24, 2025
Yunita Tjhai has always wanted her kids to be able to speak, read and write Mandarin. Unable to speak Chinese, the San Francisco mother of three, who grew up in Indonesia, regretted that she was never able to communicate with her monolingual Chinese-speaking grandparents.
She and her husband Brian Hollinger enrolled their kids in Mandarin-immersion daycare. The oldest child is now in first grade at one of San Francisco’s only two Mandarin immersion public elementary schools.
Hollinger is concerned that the district has not met the growing demand for Mandarin immersion education and that SFUSD’s turbulent financial situation might jeopardize his kids’ Mandarin education.
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 