Ernest Hemingway STEAM School’s dual immersion will merge with Alturas Elementary
BY ERIC VALENTINE
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Not everything involving school these days has to do with coronavirus safety and distance learning. There’s good old-fashioned difficult policy decisions happening, too.
Blaine County School District last week released a nine-point explanation of the school board’s decision to merge the dual-immersion program at Ernest Hemingway STEAM School, Ketchum, into Alturas Elementary, Hailey, a dual-immersion magnet school. Dual immersion (DI) is a program in which students learn core academic content taught in both English and Spanish.
“The decision was made by the board with regret due to an ongoing and recently exacerbated shortage of qualified DI teachers, leaving us unable to appropriately staff both programs,” the district stated in its explanation to parents.
Maintaining both the single track of DI instruction at Hemingway and the fully integrated program at Alturas did not represent a “best practice,” the district explained.
“Whereas the Alturas program utilizes a team approach in which each class is taught by one native English speaker and one native Spanish speaker, the Hemingway program utilized a single-teacher format in which the language and non-language content was taught by one teacher who was either native Spanish or native English speaking. That teacher at times had to teach concepts (such as photosynthesis) in their non-native language,” the district said.
Not So Fast
There was pushback by some parents in the district. Some felt the matter was handled too abruptly and at least one parent complained that the merger may be racially motivated. The district explained the timeliness issue and firmly denied the racial allegation.
“While the time frame was shorter than the board would have preferred, ample opportunity for public comment was afforded via email … This form of public comment has proven to be superior to live comment in that it affords the commenting party time to organize and present their ideas and also provides more time for individual trustees to absorb and consider public input. More than 50 email comments and several calls were received by the trustees,” the district said.
Regarding the claim that race played a factor in the decision, “The board’s commitment to DI learning and the needs of our Hispanic students who are not-native English speakers is exemplified by its support of the Alturas magnet school, which in fact has shown them better academic success than the EHSS program over time. Such claims are unfounded and disregard the actual problem: a severe shortage of qualified bilingual and biliterate teachers to staff two programs.”
Making It Work
The district said that transportation will be provided for Hemingway DI students wishing to attend the DI program at Alturas. The district also said extra support will be provided for rising first and second graders who remain at Hemingway if they need extra assistance to adjust to the English-only program.
The district’s full explanation of the board’s decision can be found online at blaineschools.org/Page/1794.