As of September 2013, parents in the Peel Region of Canada will have to enter their children in a lottery for a chance at French Immersion. The trustees voted
Siblings were the only students spared in recent vote.
unanimously on Tuesday, September 25 to introduce a French Immersion lottery and to drop the hours of French education from 85% to 50% in grade one. The only amendment that was made to the original proposal was to introduce a grandfather clause ensuring that children with a sibling currently in French Immersion would not have to enter the lottery.
There was no opportunity for the public to voice their concerns at the meeting prior to the vote but the trustees appeared to have their mind made up and were more enthusiastic with retirement wishes to a colleague than the issue at hand. Janet McDougald, the Chair of the Board, said “French Immersion is a choice not a right,” in reference to the decision and is fine with dropping to the lowest possible acceptance standard by law.
Parents outside of the Peel District should be equally concerned. “I know that most boards are reviewing the delivery of their programs for the exact same reasons we did,” says McDougald.
The decision has been made but we’d love to hear your thoughts on what parents should do to voice their concerns.
Is the grandfathering for just next year or for all future years? I have one in gr. 1 french immersion and one in jk. I would move but it seems most systems are not dumbing down our schools and do FI in kindergarten so my kids might not be able to get into those schools because peel did not provide them with the french education required.
The grandfathering is for all future years. Your children will be fine due to your child in grade one.
As I understood it, the grandfathering clause only applied from Sept 2012. Those that get in Sept 2013 and beyond know full well that their 2nd child will still have to play the lottery to get in and those parents make that choice to gamble. Separate your kids – but the parents take that gamble.
I will try to get clarification
What’s disheartening is that the public was invited to attend a meeting on the premise that their voice would be heard when in actuality – it was pointless to attend. It was clear that all trustees had already made their minds up no matter what would be presented at that meeting, The way the civic politics works. The community who wasted their time (and sat through 4 hours including the worst ppt presentation I have ever seen -was that in slow motion? – before that vote took place -oh and ppl with small children 11 pm!) watched the fake show when I would rather have put my kids to bed on time and finished up some work of my own that I can actually influence outcomes for.
Further, if there had been communication prior to the decision being made, parents could have helped come up with a plan such as regionalization of these issues to the regions that are experiencing the problem (BRAMPTON) or alternates such reducing bus service to the levels the regular english schools have or beginning the collective bargaining process to pay french immersion teachers more as market is demanding these skills (pay more= increase demand = supply will naturally increase)…Although the trustees who have trouble with english and math are representing us, there are parents that don’t have trouble with math, english and economics.
But I guess I just have to move to Toronto now to get my child a french immersion education since the Peel region now has the worst program in the country. Wish I would have known this 18 months ago before I chose Mississauga over Toronto. Good thing our trustees are focusing on “quality” so steadfastly – such a joke.
The grandfather clause if for everyone! Here is Janet’s response:
If you have an older sib in the FI program, your child automatically gets in and so on. If your child does not get in next year then if your 2nd child does when ready – your 3rd, 4th, and 5th child will. You must have 1 in Gr 1-8 for the next one to be grandfathered.
It is meant to recognize families that are committed to FI.
It was very disappointing to see how bad PDSB’s planning and the communication was throughout this process. With a little more creativity and better planning, they could have easily overcome the “so-called” challenges. However they preferred to deal with it the easy-way rather than thinking the best interest of the Peel kids and families!! We definitely need more kids who are fluent in both of our official languages to represent us in the Global platform in the future. It’s annoying how our trustees are blindsided. I invite them to look at the facts, numbers and data as well as heat the voice of parents (results of the Peel FI Parent survey, EQAO Results, Early Language Exposure studies!!). They should reconsider this decision immediately!!
One suggestion was that we as parents tell our schools that we no longer want correspondance from the Board “if they ignore us, we will ignore them”. I am not sure how realistic this is? But if enough of us did it???
I am now very concerned with the lack of transparency and the seeming lack of care the Trustees have in regards to the parents they are suppose to represent!
I was not at the meeting however, I was told that the Trustees put up a list of things they will be doing in the future to get qualified FI teachers – THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE YEARS AGO! Who do they think they are kidding, they did nothing to seek out FI teachers and now the system is in trouble….so wrong.
That’s already the case in Vancouver. My eldest (who just began grade 1) didn’t ‘win’ a French Immersion spot in the lottery. Three months into kindergarten he was offered a spot – but at a school almost as far from our home as it could be while still being in the same city. Knowing that he was settled into the regular stream, the 40-ish minute commute (each way, twice a day, no school buses) sealed our decision. What makes me especially sad is the realization that, realistically, his little brother won’t be getting FI, either.
(And then there was the lottery for another special programme, in which he ended up 37 of 39 boys on the wait list…)
Definition of Canada-Mega-casino.Now thanks to school boards and government cuts we can make our children working members of the casino ,gambling on their educations and futures by entering them into a lottery.Nice work Ontario.