The Palo Alto School Board on Tuesday unanimously recommended that assistant superintendant Marilyn Cook should proceed with the Foreign Language in Elementary Schools (FLES) study by convening a steering committee.

Superintendant Kevin Skelly requested an initial FLES report be made at the Nov. 13 board meeting, including a definition of proficiency, impact on elementary instruction program and possible trade-offs. One key source of information is the Partners in Education Benchmarking study, which identifies several school districts across the country similar to PAUSD. Board member Barbara Mitchell brought up the lack of language requirements for high school graduation, although the Universities of California require a foreign language.

Three of six board candidates spoke out as community members on the topic. Wynn Hausser supports the study but is “concerned that if the answer is all or nothing, it will be too expensive to implement a FLES program.”

Melissa Baten Caswell “encourages the board in parallel with the study to investigate prior to their work on the Strategic Plan if language is part of the core curriculum or an elective (as it is now)” and, if it is core, when does it start – kindergarten, sixth grade, 9th grade. Caswell stressed that the district should prioritize foreign language with other core curriculum and district goals, i.e. mathematics, the arts, closing the achievement gap so that scarce resources can be well used.

Claude Ezran said he is “glad the Board is looking at FLES” and suggests two ways to implement it: 1) start in Kindergarten or first grade and add a grade per year or 2) start in 6th grade and backfill down – which he prefers because it has less risk. Ezran noted that the benchmark districts have longer school days, allowing time for foreign language.

The PAUSD just received a Foreign Language Assistance Program, FLAP, grant from the Federal Department of Education to start up a Mandarin language program. The grant covers three years with the initial payment of $200,000 and requires a match of funds from PAUSD.

Skelly noted that the required matching funds are already being spent on Mandarin at the high schools and necessitate no extra funds. This grant would allow the PAUSD to hire a Mandarin trained Teacher on Special Assignment, TOSA, part-time to develop curriculum for K-12.

Skelly stressed that he did not want to reopen the Mandarin Immersion debate, but community members did anyway. The key opposition to the grant, which does not require board or community approval, concerns equity across the district and the policy implications of taking monies for specialty programs. Secondary community opposition concerns what happens at the end of three years: how the district will fund an additional language going forward- will another language have to be dropped?

Assistant Superintendent Scott Laurence presented the 11th day attendance figures, on which budgets are based. The PAUSD has 11,172 students, an increase of 235 students from 2006-7. Growth in K-5 was 111, growth in 6-8 was 90, and growth in 9-12 was 16 (totaling 217 with the remaining 18 in alternative programs.) Scott Bowers presented the impressive staff retention statistic of 95% from 06-07 to 07-08. PAUSD continues to review staff retention as important to maintaining consistency.