There are 42 children in South Washington County schools who next fall won't be able to get into what has become a popular Spanish language immersion program.

They are the latest among hundreds of students across the metro area and state who haven't been able to enroll in a language immersion program because there isn't space for them.

"[The programs] are very popular, as they should be," says Karen Klinzing, assistant commissioner for the Minnesota Department of Education. "We are more likely to be doing business with other countries and cultures" in the future, she said. "We need to be prepared as a country to be able to do that."

Meeting the demand, however, is not an easy problem to solve.

Language immersion programs present transportation, personnel and building space challenges. Districts that assign elementary schools by neighborhoods face the burden of bringing students from a large district to one school. Getting qualified teachers can be difficult.

And designing a program for students that goes from kindergarten through high school is complicated, said Dave Bernhardson, South Washington County's assistant superintendent for elementary education.

A state study released a year ago concluded that school districts are not planning for the additions and expansions required by the demand for language programs.

So this year, rather than open up two more classes, which would dissolve the waiting list, the South Washington County district chose to step back and spend a year studying the problem and potential solutions.

Nearly 11,000 students attend some 52 language immersion programs in Minnesota, according to the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA), a federal program housed at the University of Minnesota. Ten years ago there were only 13 such programs.

"Most of the programs are at capacity," said Tara Fortune, program coordinator for CARLA.

In South Washington County, the program has been growing by about 60 students each year. But because the district gives preference to siblings, only 18 of next fall's 60 slots were available through a lottery.

Last year the program, called Nuevas Fronteras, was housed at Crestview Elementary School in Cottage Grove and had 41 students on a waiting list. The program admits only kindergarten students.

Meeting demand is a problem for other districts, too. St. Louis Park and Robbinsdale immersion programs have waiting lists.

Some districts, however, are expanding. The Forest Lake Area School District is set to open a Spanish language immersion program this fall. A year later the Minneapolis district will open a French immersion school.

Gregory A. Patterson • 612-673-7287