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.
