Parents, staff rave about Redwood City School District Mandarin Immersion program

Starting out in 2015, the immersion program offered a single class to 24 students in the Redwood City School District with one teacher as their guide and district office staff offering support. Since then, the program has grown to serve nearly 170 students.

The first round of middle school students entered the program this school year as sixth graders at Kennedy Middle School. And Rivera noted slots for the program’s first standalone transitional kindergarten class quickly filled up ahead of its start this fall despite declining TK enrollment across the district.

Rivera, whose background is in Spanish bilingual teaching, said that expansion has always been the vision for the program. And the promise to families then remains true today — to offer children of any background the opportunity to become bilingual and biliterate in the most spoken language in the world through an academically enriching environment.

While students are learning about the U.S. Constitution or basic hygiene in Mandarin, Rivera said they’re also strengthening their English skills regardless of whether their primary language is English, Mandarin or something else. Offering those opportunities in a free public school setting is a game changer, especially for the divested and underserved students who reside within Redwood City School District’s boundaries, Rivera argued.

“The world becomes wider in terms of your economic value, in terms of job opportunities. But also your world perspective is bigger. You view the world from a different lens when you can view the world from more than one perspective,” Rivera said.

Supporting students

Ten teachers are tasked with developing those skills with support from classroom assistants. Winnie Wong, a teacher in the program, said it has had strong success recruiting teachers despite staffing shortages plaguing districts across the state and high demand for bilingual teachers.

For many teachers, Wong said, being able to share a culture with students who may not have the means to travel abroad is a major driver for pursuing this line of work. Exchanging teaching methods is also a key priority, she said, noting the program receives strong interest in its teacher aide positions from San Francisco State University students.

“We’re so lucky to have a group of innovative and passionate bilingual teachers with credentials,” Wong said.

Beyond its education staff, Rivera said much of the program’s success comes from the support of parents who play a key role in recruitment efforts given that public schools are less experienced at recruitment than private institutions, she argued.

Pauline Wang, the mother of a second grader in the program and an incoming kindergartner, serves on the parent committee and said members were forced to pivot their outreach efforts during the pandemic to remote events.

While ice cream mixers and other events allowed parents to speak face to face about the benefits of the program, Wang said members were pleasantly surprised to find that virtual events still proved beneficial.

“These are parents that really care about their kids’ education,” Wang said, noting many parents with children in the program do not speak Mandarin.

In addition to joining parent groups and leading recruitment, Mandarin-speaking parents have dedicated hours to tutoring students after school, a vital offering for many who struggled during pandemic-forced remote learning. Establishing a formal after-school tutoring program is the next step, Rivera said.

Julia Feng, a founding member of the immersion program and current member of the Mandarin Immersion Program parent group, said that culture of service and inclusivity has been fostered from the start.

“Our program is very unique not just in the amazing teachers that we have and the growth that we’re having but certainly we have an unparalleled experience for families,” Feng said. “It’s just really amazing that kids can come into a public school program and really get the full benefits of everyone pulling for them.”

Future challenges

The program has continued to grow over the years and has a substantial wait list of families eager to enter classes but, like the state, it faces its own enrollment concerns. Starting at the third grade level, student attrition begins to fall partly due to students leaving to other schools in the district, private school programs or out of the Bay Area and state altogether.

Filling the vacated spots can be a challenge given that Mandarin is a difficult language to learn, making it challenging to offer the seat to a student with no background in Mandarin.

Out-of-district transfers once helped buoy the program but the district recently ended the acceptance of outside students after a shift in its funding model from being state-funded to supporting its budget largely through local property taxes. If the district were to accept out-of-district transfers, it would not receive additional funds for the students and would have to cover their education under the existing budget.

But recent actions taken by the board are intended to help relieve some stress. In January, the board approved a request from parents and staff to allow nine siblings of inter-district transfers to enroll in the program in the future, a move largely focused on keeping families together.

Trustees also were to consider a policy that would limit the ability of parents to transfer their children to another school in the district after enrolling them into a school-of-choice program like the Mandarin Immersion Program or the Adelante Selby Spanish Immersion School.

Discussions around the policy have been paused after trustees received pushback from parents, some of whom are currently involved with the immersion program. Many argued that by taking away choice, parents would opt to enroll their students in private programs while they weigh their options and suggested the district instead focus on investing in the program so parents are less likely to remove their children for what may seem to be a better option.

Ultimately, Feng said a main issue is a misperception that sheds a negative light on public schools while placing private schools on a pedestal. By supporting public schools and their specialized programs, Feng and trustees argued that parents could be pleasantly surprised by the quality of education their children receive while supporting opportunities that should be open to all students regardless of their socioeconomic background.

“Because of programs like ours, we’re able to make really amazing opportunities available to students who otherwise wouldn’t have it because of a lack of family resources,” Feng said. “There’s definitely a lot of work to do but I’m very proud of what everyone has accomplished together and I hope that we can continue to grow things.”

sierra@smdailyjournal.com

(650) 344-5200 ext. 106