Woodstock is proudly welcoming about 30 new immersion students to Portland's oldest Chinese Dual Language immersion program this fall. Welcome to all the new families and new kindergarteners!
For families who have been around for awhile, you know that program advocacy plays a major role in our work to support students. We are once again spending all of our extra time working closely with our other Portland partner parent organizations representing the Albina/North Portland Mandarin immersion program, the Japanese immersion program, and the Vietnamese immersion program.
Our 4 boards have been working closely with district leadership, the Portland Schoolboard, and the Student Success committee over the last year to preserve one of the jewels of our program, the 8th grade research residency exchange to Taiwan. Every year, our 8th graders complete a year long capstone project and a 2 week research residency in Taiwan (previously China) to complete their research in Mandarin. These research residency programs have been in existence for more than 20 years, but in the last few years, district leadership has suggested that students should not miss 10 consecutive days of school because it could have adverse results on their learning, or on the educational experience of non traveling students. Despite a lack of evidence for both of these suggestions, district leadership continues to press and proposes a maximum of 7 days out of school, while the student success committee recommendation is a minimum of 10 days.
The schoolboard will vote on this at the September 10th schoolboard meeting. We need our community to come out once again to stand in solidarity with our 4 asian language DLI programs as we advocate for all of our students.
We will post updated information here and on our facebook page when we have further details around the time that the vote will take place. We want families to come and fill the district building to show our support. And as always, wear RED to show your support!
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