Oakville’s six-year-olds didn’t face good odds when it came to the Halton Catholic school board’s French Immersion (FI) lottery held last week.
For the coming school year, 118 students competed for only 46 Grade 1 spaces allocated to the popular program.
Tamara Adamo’s youngest daughter was one of the hopeful students, looking to join her two older sisters in the immersion program at St. Mary Catholic Elementary School in north-west Oakville.
Adamo says FI has kept her older girls engaged and challenged in the classroom, and that they’ve developed skill and comfort in using Canada’s other official language.
But her youngest didn’t make the lottery cut and is now 44th on the wait list for a spot next year.
That leaves Adamo looking at options outside of the Halton Catholic board for her daughter.
"I don't want her to miss out on the amazing opportunities her sisters have had," she says.
Limit of 46 new students a year
Adamo is a member of the school council at St. Mary, the only Catholic elementary school in Oakville offering the French immersion program.
The board has placed FI in one school in each Halton municipality, and limits entry to two Grade 1 classes, or 46 students, each year.
Last February, facing a significant increase in demand, trustees opted to add an extra two Grade 1 FI classes in each municipality for the current school year.
Families like Adamo’s are now pressuring Halton’s Catholic school board trustees to continue expanding the program to meet demand.
Delegations have kept the issue on the board’s agenda over the last several meetings. At the Dec. 1 meeting, trustees heard from Mary Cruden, a representative from the Ontario branch of Canadian Parents for French.
She said the popularity of FI has spiked province-wide, with participation growing at an average of 5.6% each year for the last 14 consecutive years.
No winners or losers
Cruden urged trustees to develop a plan to eliminate the lottery by reorganizing its space. She also shared the process other school boards have used to expand FI programming.
“The best most caring practice in admissions is that every applicant gets a spot,” she said. “No winners or losers, no child is turned away. It is just the same as regular English schools, which expand to meet demand.”
While the challenge of hiring enough qualified French teachers and finding the space for the program at crowded elementary schools has been cited as a reason to limit program size, Cruden noted that boards across the province have found ways to address those issues.
When space at one FI site fills up, boards launch the program at another school to meet demand.
“A French Immersion student occupies the space amount of space as any other student,” she argued.
Temporary alternate space possible for Oakville
That approach may be what happens in Oakville, at least while board staff develop a longer-term plan.
A staff report provided to trustees at the Dec. 1 meeting suggested moving toward managing program expansion differently in each municipality, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all model.
For Oakville, where St. Mary is nearing capacity and only able to accommodate a maximum of three Grade 1 FI classes next year, that could mean moving additional FI classes to a temporary alternate location until a comprehensive boundary review is undertaken.
Trustees divided on best approach to expansion
Expansion of FI appears a divisive issue for the board, which has spent several meetings arguing over the best way to approach the issue.
Oakville trustee Helena Karabela has been a vocal supporter of developing a plan for growing the successful program.
“Each year we don't expand when we could, children miss out and siblings may miss out on the opportunity of learning a second language and our second official language at that,” she explained, in an email to Oakville News.
While often perceived as opposing expansion, Oakville trustee Nancy Guzzo says she just wants to make sure expansion is done with the minimum disruption to students in both the French Immersion and English streams.
"Nobody at the table is saying no to the expansion of French Immersion," she said. "What we're saying is that we want to make sure we check all the boxes."
"The thing I would hate to do is expand it temporarily at a location and then find out when we do a boundary review shortly thereafter that we have to move it, because that is disruptive."
Trustees have directed board staff to bring a plan for a FI boundary review to their next meeting on Dec. 15.