The Chapel Hill – Carrboro City Schools Board of Education voted last Thursday to create a schoolwide magnet concept for the Mandarin Dual Language program at Glenwood Elementary School.
The dual-language program has been operating along with traditional-track students at Glenwood since 2002, which has led to overcrowding issues at what officials said was the district’s smallest elementary school.
Parents of traditional-track students at Glenwood, including Ron Difelice, piled into the board meeting last week to voice their opposition to this proposal, which will require some traditional students to be redistricted.
“All we want, traditional families,” he told the board, “are to go to the school that we’re districted for when we bought our frickin’ houses. Is that too much to ask?”
Amanda Thorne told the board that she had taught kindergarten at Glenwood for 12 years and had no plans to leave but will be unable to stay on at Glenwood under the new program.
“My goal was to make an impact on Glenwood students until I retire,” she said. “I had no plans of ever leaving Glenwood. If I’m transferred, I do not know which school I’ll be told to go to and what grade level will be available.”
Parents were critical of the board holding the vote without what they felt was proper public input and transparency. The agenda for the school board meeting was published a week ahead of the meeting, but that aligned with preparations ahead of Hurricane Florence earlier this month.
Board members had been searching for a long-term solution to the overcrowding issues at Glenwood for years, and assistant superintendent Todd LoFrese said inaction was not going to bring about a solution.
“Clearly, I think we all recognize how emotionally draining this is, and it has gotten to the point where we can see that it’s divisive,” LoFrese said. “And so the school community is fractured. And not doing anything isn’t going to address that.”
Glenwood’s capacity is 412 students, according to a district spokesperson. Figures provided by the district show that enrollment at the school over the last five years has ranged from 446 to 513 students. Meanwhile, there has been a wait list for the Mandarin program during that time ranging from four to 49 students, which is the current wait list.
LoFrese said many of the concerns expressed with this round of discussions were brought up when the decision was made five years ago to transition Frank Porter Graham Elementary School to a Spanish-focused dual language magnet school.
“It was an emotional year,” the assistant superintendent said of that conversion. “There were a lot of emotions that were running really high: lots of tears, upset families, upset teachers.”
Some of the concerns expressed by board members, including board chair Rani Dasi, focused on recruiting enough Mandarin-proficient teachers to fill the open positions that will be created by transitioning to a magnet school.
“How do we then fill a full school and continue to recruit and retain,” Dasi said. She added, “it would be helpful to understand what that would look like, even if we have to have estimates.”
District staff said the goal would be to have the staffing done as the program was phased in, rather than needing an entire staff immediately. But superintendent Dr. Pam Baldwin acknowledged that recruiting qualified teachers would be a challenge.
“Recruiting teachers who are bilingual, in Mandarin specifically, is really, really difficult, in North Carolina and everywhere in this country,” Baldwin said. “It just is.”
Other concerns were the overall cost to transition the school to a full magnet and whether there would be enough demand to support the program.
Board member James Barrett – who lives in a neighborhood that would be districted to attend Glenwood and said his son attended Glenwood for three years – said that parents who were forced into spot redistricting would be pleased with the quality of schools their children would be redirected toward, which staff said would likely be Northside, Rashkis, Scroggs and Estes Hills elementary schools.
“Once kids are in their new schools, the parents who passionately defend their prior school become just as passionate in defending where they land,” Barrett said.
Board member Pat Heinrich spoke just before last week’s vote addressing what he called “the elephant in the room,” that his daughter is in the Mandarin program at Glenwood.
“When I ran for this board, my daughter was in preschool and wasn’t even eligible for this lottery,” Heinrich said. “Back then, I supported the Mandarin program. And, if I’ve been anything, I’ve been consistent and transparent about that from then until now.”
Under the recommendation approved last week, Glenwood will begin the transition to a magnet program next academic year with the incoming class. Traditional-track students in grades two through five would be grandfathered in and the district would seek to operate a traditional track until those students aged out.
The final vote was 4-3 with James Barrett, Amy Fowler, Pat Heinrich and Margaret Samuels voting for the proposal. Rani Dasi, Joal Hall Broun and Mary Ann Wolf were the board members who voted against.
District staff must now finalize logistical plans to move toward the school transition. Additional decisions on redistricting and other matters are expected to come back before the board in December with a vote possibly in January.
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