By Tina Comeau
TRANSCONTINENTAL MEDIA
NovaNewsNow.com
When Shelburne County board member Andrea Huskilson-Newell looked around the table at an April 20 school board meeting and saw hers was the only hand raised to vote in favour of keeping early French immersion at Evelyn Richardson Memorial Elementary School (ERMES), the devastation on her face was evident.
She blinked back tears and shook her head in disappointment.
When the Tri-County Regional School Board ultimately voted to discontinue the early French immersion program at ERMES at the end of this school year, ERMES parents who were at he meeting also left in tears.
The discontinuation of the program means that starting next year no early French immersion programming will be offered in Shelburne County. There are late French immersion programs offered at Barrington and Shelburne high schools, although the board approved a recommendation at the April 20 meeting to evaluate the late immersion program at Shelburne Regional High School on a year-to-year basis.
Board members said their decision to halt the program at ERMES, while difficult to make, was based on numbers. Enrolment in the program is low. According to a school utilization report the board received in February, there are 30 students from Grades Primary to 6 in the program. That was out of a school population of 147. The school has two combined multi-grade-level early immersion classes at the school – a Grade P-2 class and a Grade 3-6 class.
Huskilson-Newell, however, maintains enrolment in the program is low because for years the school board has always raised the possibility of elimination of the program. She said if the board had done the opposite, and instead committed to the program over the long-term, parents would have been more eager to register their children in it.
And she felt passionately that the board should have allowed all of the students in the program now to see it through to Grade 6.
“I feel that we should have seen the students currently enrolled in French immersion at ERMES through the program and continue to offer the French immersion program at ERMES providing 18 students-plus enroll in the program in Grade Primary each year,” she said.
The board says it would have cost it $528,000 to see all of the students in the early immersion program through to Grade 6. Board member Joan Brewer said in five years time they would have had a situation where you would have one teacher teaching the two students who this year are in Grade Primary. She was concerned over the funding implication to the board.
Board member Alvin Comeau, who represents an Acadian region of the school board and is a strong advocate of French immersion, also could not bring himself to support the continuation of the program at ERMES given the cost and the low enrolment. He said it was not an easy decision.
One issue that came up during the discussion about French immersion is how the board has been unsuccessful in attempts to secure more federal funding to offer French immersion programming. The school board receives $321,000 in funding under the French Special Project Grant but the actual cost to deliver French immersion in its schools is $1.5 million. This board offers more French immersion programming than other boards in the province.
Meanwhile, in a letter to the Shelburne Coast Guard, Nicole D’Eon, the parent of an early French immersion ERMES student, said she was sad about the lack of interest in the program from the majority of board members and “how they seemed so easy to dismiss the program altogether with no real consideration for the children.”
She said the board should take the blame for not promoting the program more to increase enrolment numbers. She also said years ago parents had received a verbal promise from the board that students who entered the program in Grade Primary would receive French immersion education until Grade 6.
Huskilson-Newell agrees the board should have stayed committed to these students.
“I wish these students would have been able to finish the program at ERMES,” she said, saying these students should not have to go through the upheaval of seeing the program discontinued and they should be given an opportunity for an early start to a bilingual education. She said these children are not just “numbers.”
