Heather Latter
The Northwest Catholic District School Board has agreed to look into possibly reinstating the French Immersion program here.
Director of Education Rick Boisvert said the board discussed the issue Monday morning.
“We have made a decision that we are going to begin a process to determine viability for the program,” he noted.
Boisvert said the board will hold some parent meetings to share information and answer questions.
“We know the benefits of the program,” he stressed.
“The big thing to determine is the level of interest in whether there are sufficient numbers to make the program viable.”
The move came after Kim Kirk and Melanie Halvorsen, representing the Fort Frances Parents for French group, asked the board at its regular monthly meeting last week to consider reinstating French Immersion here.
It has not been offered locally for the past eight years.
A popular program in the 1980s, French Immersion eventually saw a lack of enrolment. And given the overall declining population in the area, the Catholic board decided in 2006 to begin phasing it out.
“I did French Immersion from JK on and I’m really hoping we will be able to provide the same opportunities to our children that we had as children,” said Halvorsen, a physician who recently returned to practise here.
“I have a son in SK at St. Michael’s and I would love for him to have the opportunities that I had growing up—having the opportunity to experience the French language and to become fluent in both of Canada’s languages,” echoed Kirk.
“We want to know if the board is open to the dialogue of having the French Immersion program reinstated in our community,” she added.
The group’s goal is to have a French program at St. Michael’s School beginning in the next school year (2015-16).
“We have done some background research,” Kirk noted.
“The data proves very strong that with our young kids, there are the numbers to support the reinstating of the program.”
The pair said 70 parents responded to an electronic survey passed around Facebook over a three-day period, with 96 percent of respondents being in favour of supporting the French Immersion program.
“Of that, there are 99 children who would be willing to be enrolled in the program should it be started,” Halvorsen said.
“And again, this is a small sample size, so we expect that there would be many more should we enhance our survey,” she added.
Kirk noted the survey was conducted only through Facebook, not within the schools.
“There are more parents out there who would support the program,” she stressed.
“This is just a very small snapshot of the research that we gathered,” Kirk added.
She also noted some of the students included in the survey are not enrolled with the Catholic board, but would be willing to transfer over if the program is available for them.
“French Immersion is also one of those things that is really important in a town our size to be competitive—competitive for recruiting physicians, engineers, all sorts of professionals,” Halvorsen reasoned.
“People are interested in putting their kids in French Immersion and so I think it’s a really important thing when you look at recruitment and retention . . . of teachers and other professionals and other people in the community,” she said.
“I can name a dozen people who will move away because they want the best for their kids and they think French Immersion is really, really important to their children’s education,” Halvorsen added.
Trustees Harold Huntley and Cathy Bowen commented at last week’s meeting on the difficult decision it was to cut the program back in 2006.
Only eight students had enrolled to attend FSK at St. Michael’s School that fall and the board’s policy stated the class could not run with less than 20.
The board based its decision on a number of reports and statistics provided by administration, including enrolment, attrition rates, local and regional birth rates, and baptismal rates.
“When we discontinued the French Immersion program . . . we did it because we tried our darnedest but we couldn’t get more than 14, 15 kids in JK/SK, which we just couldn’t function at that rate because you have attrition,” Huntley said.
“So if you have only 18 or so students to start with, by Grade 3 or 4 you are down to 14, [and] by the time you get to Grade 6 or 7, you are down to 10,” he explained.
“So it’s really important that you have a big cohort to start with.
“And I’m assuming you’d want to start with the kindergarten level and each year work a little farther than that,” Huntley said to Kirk and Halvorsen.
“But you are really going to have to beat the bushes to get numbers that are going to prove you got it,” he stressed.
“When I first became a trustee, that was the difficult decision we had to make,” echoed Bowen.
“We kept it for probably two extra years when we didn’t have the numbers and when the third year came around, the numbers were so low that we just couldn’t do it,” she recalled.
“But we did make them a promise that we would keep it through to Grade 8,” Bowen added, saying that by the time the students got to Grade 8, it was triple-graded (i.e., three grades in one).
Bowen also said there’s the added challenge of finding French teachers.
“There are so many things to consider—not just the numbers at the start, unfortunately—it’s as the years progress, too,” she remarked.
However, the Fort Frances Parents for French believe there is strong community support for French Immersion locally.
“We see five strong years of enrolment numbers in the survey,” they noted in a follow-up letter to the board.
“We feel that if we were able to reach a bigger audience, the numbers would have been higher and this is just a small sampling of the community,” they added.
“The experience and history of French Immersion within this school board will allow for a sound re-implementation of this program,” the pair said.
“The upcoming economic possibilities in the pulp and paper and mining industries create a perfect time to move on this initiative.
“A French Immersion program can attract new students for our school board, provide incentive for families to move to our community, and will better serve our current population of students,” they argued.
Boisvert noted the board currently is assessing the possibility of offering French Immersion at Sacred Heart School in Sioux Lookout.
He noted a lot the “leg work” has been done in Sioux Lookout, and reinstating the program at St. Michael’s here is something they could consider looking into further.
“The survey is one step but it will involve additional work,” Boisvert warned.
Contact Aimee Matheson (aimeehelen@gmail.com) for more information about Fort Frances Parents for French.
