I spent New Year’s Day updating my list of Mandarin immersion programs after following up on the information and leads readers, parents, teachers and administrators so kindly send me about what’s happening in Mandarin immersion.  Here’s the newly updated list. We’re up to 277 U.S. programs, including a few that will launch this coming fall.

To see the full list, click on the link below. It will open a spreadsheet that contains all the schools I have information about. And you can always go to the page of this blog that the list lives on, which is here.

Mandarin immersion program list 2019-01-01

Additions:

• Adobe Bluffs Elementary School, Poway Unified School District, San Diego
• AXIS International Academy, Ft. Collins, CO (opening Fall 2019)
• Camelot Prep, Orange, CA K – 12 Private.
  • I had been told by a parent that this school had diminished the amount of Mandarin taught and had deleted it previously. The schools says otherwise. Trying to find other parents to get a better sense of the school and its focus but I’m adding it back in for now.
• Chief Sealth International High School 
  • This is the high school portion of Seattle Public Schools’ Mandarin immersion program. It begins at Beacon Hill Elementary and Dearborne Elementary schools, continues at Mercer Middle School and then finishes at Chief Sealth. [Note: Sealth is pronounced See-ELTH. And he was indeed the Salish chief after whom the city was named.]
• Cornerstone Mandarin Immersion Program, Palo Alto, Calif.
• Pacific Academy, K – 12, Irvine, Calif.
• Polis Montessori World School, private, New York City

International Additions:

• No. 28 Primary School in District 5  in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
  • This is an elementary and possible middle school (K-8, I think) in Argentina.  The only information I could gather was from a news article here.
• Luyanzi College Kampala, Uganda
  • This is a school that teaches Mandarin and may be immersion. While it’s called a college, what I can glean from its website and the article about it online makes it seem as if it’s more a high school-college, which isn’t uncommon in many parts of the world. But not fully clear. It has a website, though it’s not always up. There’s also an article up about it here.

Changes:

• Plantation Elementary School in Lafayette, La.
  • Has changed its name to Cpl. Micheal Middlebrook Elementary

Deletions:

• UC iPrep Charter Academy, Los Angeles.
  • Closed abruptly on August 22, 2018

• Worldspeak, Los Angeles
  • Removed as a parent told me it is only preschool and Kindergarten. Waiting to hear back from the school.

Thanks to Jie Ming parent Brian Lam, who emailed to tell me that the school, in addition to gettin g anew building, has also expanded from three Kindergarten classes to four.

[If you’ve got a story about your Mandarin immersion school, please email me at weise (at) well (dot) com. Let’s get the word out!]

Mandarin immersion popular in St. Paul, Minn.

Some 33,000 students and 6,000 employees return to school Tuesday as St. Paul Public Schools continues to build new or renovate old learning spaces across the city.

Seven elementary schools serving 2,500 kids have wrapped up construction projects and work is ongoing at three other schools.

“There’s no way you can drive through the city of St. Paul and not see some construction happening for our students,” Chief Operating Officer Jackie Turner said.

The school board voted in December 2015 to double what it spends on deferred building maintenance, to $60 million a year. At the same time, the district has been updating its schools with more natural light, security and technology upgrades, new playgrounds, more welcoming entryways and early learning classrooms.

Schools opening Tuesday with major construction behind them include St. Anthony Park, Horace Mann and Highland Park elementary schools and the dual campus preK-8 Linwood-Monroe.

Jie Ming Mandarin Immersion Academy just moved out of Hamline Elementary and into the Homecroft building in the Highland Park neighborhood. Homecroft had housed the RiverEast therapeutic school but that program has moved to a new building east of Como Park Senior High.

Construction is ongoing at Adams Spanish Immersion and Humboldt and Como Park high schools.

Please read more here.

From The Midway Monitor

Hamline Elementary’s next chapter

It’s been in the works for a long time…

Granted, it’s pricey. But it sounds very good. And Gregg Roberts, who oversaw immersion programs in the state of Utah, is now working with them. That, to me is, the golden seal of approval.

I talked to Gregg and he agreed that it would make sense for students who take college Chinese as part of their  program — for example in  San Francisco students can take Chinese at City College — won’t be held to the AP requirement.

For many of us with children in Chinese immersion programs in the San Francisco area, NanHai was our go-to bookstore for Chinese books, available in both traditional and simplified characters. Over time, catalog and then online sales made the pleasant trip down to the store less necessary. Clearly we weren’t the only ones. Sad to see them go, but glad that their reading program will continue.

• Beth

iChineseReader

The refusal by the Riverside School Board is interesting in that it says “the plan to require students older than second grade to demonstrate grade-level proficiency in Mandarin would likely cause the school to fail the state’s requirement that a charter school match the ethnic makeup of the district where it’s located district because few non-Asian students have that proficiency.”

That would effectively mean no language immersion charter schools are possible in the entire state of California if they have language requirements past first grade — something common to all immersion programs in the state I’m familiar with. I’m curious if that rational has been used to block other immersion charters.

– Beth

Despite one rejection, the creator of a proposed charter school that would have taught students in English and Mandarin is already planning his next step.

Michael Scott, a Riverside educator who helps teach classroom strategies in China, said he will appeal to the Riverside County Board of Education, asking it to consider his charter school petition after the Riverside Unified School District board unanimously rejected it Nov. 5. State lawgives 180 days from a rejection for that appeal to be heard.

The Riverside school board denied Scott’s proposal for Western Mandarin Immersion Charter School on the advice of a team of administrators.

The petition didn’t include an adequate plan for English learners or special education students, nor did the proposal demonstrate that it had sufficient interest from potential students to be financially viable, district officials said.

And the plan to require students older than second grade to demonstrate grade-level proficiency in Mandarin would likely cause the school to fail the state’s requirement that a charter school match the ethnic makeup of the district where it’s located district because few non-Asian students have that proficiency, the district’s report concludes.

Please read more here.