Sea to Sky School District officials are looking for parents' input on a proposal to implement French immersion programming in Squamish starting with students in kindergarten or Grade 1.
For the past 27 years, the district has offered late French immersion to Squamish students beginning in Grade 5. Parents, though, have asked the District 48 board of trustees to consider switching to early immersion and while officials believe there's sufficient support for such a move, they hope parents will provide them with input on how, when and where such a program might be implemented.
In a town of 17,000, it would be difficult to offer both late and early immersion alongside a viable English program, district superintendent Lisa McCullough told a gathering of about 40 at the Eagle Eye Theatre on Monday (Oct. 28).
"It's unlikely that a district this size would be able to sustain both," McCullough said. "It's about economies of scale and there's a strong possibility that too many different programs of choice would detract from the others."
Assistant superintendent Jody Langlois said that before the board can adopt and implement such a program, it must weigh a wide range of factors including location, classroom space, transportation and staffing. For example, it's important a program that would draw students from each of the six Squamish elementary schools' catchments areas has a fairly central location and easy access to public transit. That's one big reason the late French immersion program is currently located at Squamish Elementary.
The board, Langlois said, is also weighing whether to move all Squamish Grade 7 students to Don Ross Secondary School next year, and that decision would affect the decision on early immersion, Langlois said.
District staff have already begun researching details surrounding all those variables in anticipation of offering the board a series of "what-ifs," she said. "What we're finding is that all these decisions are intertwined."
Based on the input received to date and on an expectation that Squamish's student population will rise, district officials believe they'll have to house a full K-6 or K-7 early immersion at two different schools, Langlois said.
One attendee asked McCullough whether it might be possible to begin implementing early immersion beginning in the fall of 2014.
"I honestly don't know. If we said yes, I simply don't think we'd have the space right now," the superintendent responded, adding that a fall 2014 launch might be possible if the initial intake of students were limited to just kindergarten and Grade 1.
The district has emailed links to a pair of surveys out to those who have expressed interest in the topic -one survey for the parents of youngsters in preschool to Grade 4, another for those with students in Grades 5 to 12. Surveys must be completed by Nov. 4 and the results are to be presented to the board at its Nov. 13 meeting.
