My third son was in kindergarten for the last year of Latona. The first immersion class was scheduled to be the class after his, but 100% of the families in his class supported starting immersion with his first-grade class. It was a great decision!

He and his sister (just finishing 5th grade) have got a great education there. The international education continues at Hamilton, but it peters out after that; there’s no international nor immersion program in any SPS high school.

Partly due to the popularity of JSIS, SPS has opened up a couple of other international schools: Beacon Hill (with Spanish and Mandarin immersion), and Concord (with Spanish immersion).

In the new assignment plan, the earlier draft had an English-only option to be added at JSIS, but now it says , “John Stanford International School (JSIS) will be an attendance area school offering language immersion in Spanish and Japanese. This will be a whole school program (all students participating in the language immersion program). Because there will not be an “English” path, JSIS will be linked with another attendance area school. If a family does not want the language immersion program, or if the language immersion program is not appropriate for a student, the linked school would serve as the attendance area school.”

I think the hope for many parents who do believe in foreign language immersion education is that some day it will not be seen as “alternative” but as a normal and necessary part of a basic education for children in the U.S. As in other countries where the choice is not whether you learn a foreign language, but which one(s)?

But damn, if I could have sold my rights to the space – we would have been shoo-ins this year – I could have made BANK!

Stanford should be an Alternative school like TOPS – give Wallingford a REGULAR good school, already!

With the SPS budget shortfall, you can bet all of our schools will feel the impact in one way or another. That’s why it’s critical as parents to do what we can to help.