Côté: OCDSB shouldn’t ax Early French Immersion

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On April 2, trustees for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) met to approve a review of the elementary programs it offers. While the program review report and appendix couch the process as a public consultation, readers can clearly see two proposals taking shape.

The first is the elimination of the board’s Early French Immersion program, in favour of a model similar to the Extended French program provided by the Ottawa Catholic School Board. Under that model, Grade 1 to 3 students would spend 25 per cent of their day learning in French.

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The second is the elimination of special education classes, which would see over 1,200 high-needs students fully integrated into the classrooms of community schools.

The OCDSB claims that the driving force behind the program review is equity. Dig deeper into the report, however, and the board reveals that students registered in an Early French Immersion or Special Education program that is not offered in their local school must be bussed to a school that offers such programming, at a cost of $18.9-million annually.  How serendipitous that cutting these two programs in the name of equity would also help the board cut its transportation costs even as provincial funding for school transportation is being cut.

Conspicuously missing from the report is any mention of struggles the OCDSB has had addressing its deficit. To be fair, the Ministry of Education does call for students with special needs to be placed in regular classrooms with appropriate support. The caveat is that such support often entails having educational assistants in place to work with these students. Are we to believe that a school board that must eliminate its deficit is also intent on hiring a large number of assistants?

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Most surprising, the OCDSB’s director of education, Pino Buffone, claimed on April 2 that the community itself is driving these changes. That is clearly not the case, with almost 70 per cent of families enrolling their children in the Early French Immersion program.

Making a better case, the program review report implies that Early French Immersion creates inequities among students. It calls attention to the over-representation of certain students in the board’s English program, such as those with special needs and those whose first language is not English.

The report fails to mention that the Ministry of Education directs school boards to include students with special needs and those still learning English in immersion programs, citing research that these students often do as well as their peers in such programs (and certainly do no better in English-only programs). The under-representation of such students in Early French Immersion is a damning indictment of the board’s implementation of the program, not the program itself.

Nearly a quarter of Ottawa’s workers are in government positions. Most work for the federal public service, an institution that needs its employees to be functional in the French language. One questions why all OCDSB students aren’t registered in Early French Immersion by default, and why the small minority having difficulty learning French don’t have extensive, individualized supports, as would be the case for any other subject.

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Research indicates that the brains of children are primed for language learning, with the years before the age of 10 being the most crucial.  The OCDSB would have all of its Grade 1, 2, and 3 students spending those precious years learning in English 75 per cent of the time.

Every student in Ottawa should be adequately prepared for the region’s job market. Eliminating the Early French Immersion program at the OCDSB will not help to promote equity. It will only ensure that graduates are all equally unqualified for positions in the federal public service, Ottawa’s largest employer. Email your local school trustee and let them know you feel the same.

C.D. Côté lives in Ottawa and is the proud godmother of a child entering kindergarten next year.

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