ERMES French immersion in jeopardy

By Tina Comeau

NovaNewsNow.com

The consultant who prepared a school utilization report for the Tri-County Regional School Board says he just doesn’t think the early French immersion program at Evelyn Richardson Memorial Elementary School is sustainable.

And for this reason he has presented the school board with the conclusion that the program should be discontinued immediately or phased out over the next few years.

As things stand, the school has two combined classes of immersion, a P-2 class and a Grade 3-6 class. “With only two students in Grade Primary and one in Grade 2, the concern is obvious,” writes Jim Gunn in a report that was presented to the board on Feb. 2. Gunn is a former school board superintendent who now acts as an education consultant and was hired by the board to study school utilization. “What if only two or three students join the program over the next three years? It is not unreasonable to anticipate the possibility that the total P-6 enrollment could be less than 20. Would this mean a combined class of Grade P-6?

And Gunn adds that when you are running a program with so few students in it, if two or three students move away it can have a major impact. “An enrollment that size, in that small a school where the enrollment is going down is not sustainable,” he says.

But school board member Andrea Huskilson-Newell says instead of discussing elimination of the program, the board should be doing the opposite, especially since this is the only elementary school in the Barrington-area family of schools where early French immersion is offered. “I believe if we could guarantee the French immersion program at ERMS for at least six years that you would see an increase in numbers,” she says. “Not many parents are willing to enroll their children in French immersion, knowing that it may not be available the next year, hence the low enrollment.”

Huskilson-Newell adds she doesn’t feel that money should be taken away from other programs to support a program with low numbers. But she also thinks families have been scared away from the ERMS program. “Every year we say we’re not going to guarantee it’s going to be there the next year. Not many parents are willing to take that risk,” she says, herself included. “I thought for a while myself about moving my daughter into the program, but making that sacrifice of driving her to a different school for it and thinking it could be pulled out at any time, I wasn’t willing to do that.”

Gunn’s report has been posted on the school board’s website and it has also been distributed to schools and school advisory councils. Anyone wishing to provide feedback can send input to the attention of board secretary Tanya Forrest, by March 12.

The school board is holding a special meeting at its office in Yarmouth on Tuesday, March 16 at 5:30 p.m. to discuss the feedback and make decisions about the report.

While Gunn’s report and his comments don’t support the continuation of the ERMS program, another conclusion or option he offers is that consultation with families should occur before a decision is made to discontinue the whole program at the end of this year, or to phase it out over several years. Obviously, he said, there are implications on families by a decision to stop offering the program.

Meanwhile, Gunn doesn’t think discontinuing the program would have any impact on staffing. “Usually you’ll find if you took immersion out you can operate the school with fewer teachers, not in this case,” he says. “I think there would be the same number of teachers, at least for a year or so, because of the ways the numbers line up in the very, very small English classes.”

He says the conclusions reached are for education reasons, not to save dollars.

Quick Glance

Anyone wishing to submit feedback on the school utilization study can forward it, attention Tanya Forrest, to:

Tri-County Regional School Board

79 Water Street, Yarmouth, NS, B5A 1L4

Phone: 1-800-915-0113 or 902-749-5696

Fax: 902-749-5697