Council here will offer municipal support to the Upper Grand District School Board to assist in finding alternatives to proposed limitations on the board’s French immersion program.
The offer is a response to a request from North Wellington Parents for French Immersion for help in their efforts to fight a planned cap on enrolment.
Robin Ross, who was part of the first French immersion class at Palmerston Public School nearly 40 years ago, told council at the April 19 meeting two of the 19 recommendations from a school board review of its French programs would put the future of the Palmerston program in jeopardy.
One recommendation would only allow students to enter French immersion in junior kindergarten (JK), not senior kindergarten (SK) or Grade one as is currently allowed, while the other would cap JK enrollment at 25 students.
The group believes the combined effect of the resolutions “will create a French immersion program that will fail here in northern Wellington as numbers in higher grades will dwindle.”
Ross said the recommendations are designed to combat issues such as overcrowding at French-only schools in Guelph and a lack of accredited teachers to meet the demand for French programming board-wide.
In her presentation, Ross stated the Palmerston Public School cap is 25 based on the board’s view that north Wellington is “a negative growth area.”
Assuming a standard 90% retention rate in French immersion programs, allowing only 25 students to start each year, would result in only 10 students being left by the time the group reaches Grade 8, Ross pointed out. She said parents were told at a public meeting the cap would not affect residents because it is high enough to meet the demands of the population.
“We disagree. There are currently 37 French immersion JK in Palmerston with a similar number registering for next year. That is significantly more than 25,” Ross stated.
“All they had to do was look at this year’s enrolment and they would see that their projections of a diminishing demand for French immersion here is inaccurate.”
Ross told council according to the board’s own survey, people are choosing French immersion to enhance their children’s future opportunities.
She also said there are no other enhanced educational programs available in the area.
“If the French immersion program becomes capped, it will negatively affect our area’s ability to encourage people to move here,” Ross said.
The parents group asked council to offer support to the school board’s recruiting efforts to bring new teachers to the area, “through the sharing of information and the municipality’s expertise in rural resident recruitment efforts” and to communicate to the board “how vibrant our municipality is” and that north Wellington is not an area “of loss and negative growth.”
“What we would like is to find effective solutions that the school board could use, along with the ones the review committee has submitted,” said Ross.
Mayor George Bridge said the municipality could definitely provide help in the area of teacher recruitment.
“The big concern, the way the school board is laying this out, is they can’t seem to find those teachers to come and do it,” Bridge said.
“We can really work hard at recruitment and we’ve done a really good job on doctor recruitment.”
Councillor Jean Anderson said if capping new enrolment leads to diminishing class sizes, teacher numbers will be reduced even further “because there will be nobody left to teach.”
She pointed out, “By shrinking the class, you’d be compounding the problem, rather than solving the problem.”
Anderson also questioned how the board would decide which applicants are accepted into a capped program.
“Is there any explanation of the lottery process? Because how would that get fairly done?” she asked.
Ross replied, “There is no way to fairly do a lottery.”
A resolution was passed unopposed to offer the Town of Minto’s support to the school board to “explore solutions other than capping and reducing the French immersion program” and to provide assistance in coordinating recruitment of educational professionals to the area.
