It didn’t take students long to begin rallying opposition to the Stowe School Board’s recent decision to replace French with Chinese at Stowe schools.
Letters came to the Stowe Reporter, and two petitions, one in the middle school and one in the high school, were circulated among students against the board’s decision.
Students say the school board didn’t take their opinion into account nor was the idea ever discussed with them in the classroom before the board voted.
“I would say the students are aggravated and frustrated by the decision,” Casey Sherwin, a 10th-grader at Stowe High, said Tuesday.
There is also confusion about implementation of the Chinese program at the middle-school level, and some sixth-grade students are angry that, after choosing French for half a year of exploratory study, they will not be able to take it in seventh grade next year, or in high school once they get there.
The proposal made to the board states: “Our current sixth-graders have been asked to select either French or Spanish for the 2006-2007 school year. We have 22 students who have selected French and 28 students who have selected Spanish. We would need to poll the students again once we were sure we could find a qualified teacher of Chinese. Seventh-graders would then study their chosen language for two years.”
But a parent of a sixth-grade student, who did not want to be named, said their child was upset when middle school Principal Nancy Shiok said the 22 students who had chosen French in the sixth grade this year would not be provided with French instruction next year.
“She told them that she was very sorry that the Stowe Reporter had made a mistake,” the parent said.
School board director Cam Page said that, in the final presentation of the proposal June 5, it was understood that “no child who had already taken a full year of French study would be left behind.”
Some board members and other parents at that meeting had the impression that no child who had already chosen to study French would be left behind.
No matter where the source of the confusion lies, the 22 sixth-graders who took a half year of French this year and chose to take French in seventh grade will have only the choice of studying Chinese or Spanish in the fall.
“Sixth grade is not a study; it is an introduction to languages. It’s an exploratory year,” said Alice Angney, the school superintendent. “Between seventh and eighth grade, students are taught the equivalent of the first year of that language.”
Once those students reach high school, she said, they are theoretically ready for the second level of that language.
“The students who studied French in the seventh grade and are moving into eighth grade will be able to study French through high school graduation,” Angney said.
Students speak out
Sherwin and fellow 10th-grader Livy Grosvenor started their petition at Stowe High the week before summer vacation began. They estimate 200 students signed it.
“We were talking and it just seemed like the way they brought it up, and we were not consulted, was weird. We were not involved at all,” Sherwin said.
Catie Birmingham, who wrote a letter to the editor published in last week’s Stowe Reporter, said she thinks bringing in a Chinese language program is not a bad idea in and of itself.
However, “I don’t think they should get rid of French. It was a purely economical decision. I don’t think they thought about how the students felt,” Birmingham said.
Students are irritated that they were not consulted, and those feelings are compounded by the fact that school officials did not inform them of the decision.
“We had to learn about the meeting from parents and teachers,” Birmingham said.
Sherwin said students’ general feeling about studying Chinese is that, while this may be a terrific opportunity to learn the language, its value in Stowe is questionable.
“Chinese is a great language, but it’s not easy to learn, and I don’t think students will benefit from it as much as they would from French,” Sherwin said.
Students have not delivered their petition to the school board. The board’s last meeting was June 5, when the language decision was made.
Stowe High Principal Richard Kraemer said students in the sixth grade are the only ones affected immediately by the French phase-out, and the school sent letters home to their parents, informing them of the change.
The sixth-grade parent who spoke with the Stowe Reporter said no letter of explanation was received.
Kraemer said students moving into sixth grade this fall will choose between Chinese and Spanish at the start of the school year.
The decision wasn’t announced at the high school, he said, because students at the high-school level won’t be affected. Students now taking French at the high school will be able to continue studying that language until they graduate.
Kraemer said he didn’t know about any student petition, and the only conversation he had with students about the language issue was for an article in the student-produced Raiders’ Digest. He described the conversation as a healthy one.
Ashley Tagatac, a school board member, said she was not aware of the petition, either.
“I think communication is absolutely critical. The more we can all communicate, the better,” Tagatac said.
“Personally, I am sad to see French go. It’s a travesty that we had to make this kind of decision, but I believe it is the right one based on reading I have done and people I have spoken to,” she said.
As for the students’ action, Tagatac sees the petition as a positive: “I think it’s terrific for them to feel empowered. It’s a great lesson in democracy. I hope that the board will be able to respond in some fashion.”
Board member Jed Lipsky said he is willing to open a discussion to address students’ concerns.
“Even having voted in favor of it, I feel it was a fairly isolated decision-making process that lacked the inclusive democratic process that I personally value,” he said.
Lipsky said the board chose to be driven by the notion that it had a narrow window of opportunity to hire a teacher to replace Betsy Austin, the high-school French teacher who’s retiring.
“My experience has taught me that rushed decisions don’t end up with the best decisions. It was a very major decision to have rushed,” Lipsky said.
John Nelson, executive director of the Vermont School Board Association, said only the school board itself can change a decision it makes, and there is no process to require a board to reconsider a decision. So, if the board receives a petition, “it is purely a matter of whether it’s persuasive.”
