Elementary Foreign Language "Not Off The Table"

Superintendent Bella T. Wong last night left open the possibility of expanding the foreign language department and said she is continuing to look at ways to bring language education back to the elementary schools.

In her "end of year update," Wong also gave high marks to parents who made an upgrade in technology possible, cited the dearth of high quality applicants for various open positions and praised several department heads for their outstanding contributions.

Wong said the update is part of an ongoing process of goal setting and evaluation of the  system, and that work on goals for the coming year will begin in the next couple of weeks.

News about foreign language expansion brought an enthusiastic response from School Committee member Suzy Littlefield who said the community should be involved in any decision to add a foreign language to those now offered to students starting in grades 7 and 8.

Those languages include French, Spanish, German, Latin and Mandarin Chinese, which was recently added to the curriculum. In addition, once students are in high school, Japanese, ancient Greek and Italian can be taken for independent study credit.

"We're very pleased with the introduction of Mandarin," Wong said. "Also, we're looking at adding a language."

Among those languages Wong said might be considered for inclusion in the curriculum are Arabic, Swahili and "other Asian languages."

Wong said another possibility could be adding another year of foreign language education by adding it to the sixth-grade curriculum.

"Also not off the table is restarting our elementary language program, but that would be just a single language," she said.

Spanish was cut from the elementary grades five years ago when a Proposition 21/2 override vote failed. The cut caused furor among parents whose offer to fund the program privately was rejected by the School Committee at the time.

In addition to the foreign language discussion, Wong had high praise for the efforts of PTOs to raise money to augment the schools' technology departments.

She said because of money raised through private donations, four of the seven elementary schools will have Elmo and Smart Board technology in each classroom to help with interactive lessons. The other three, Sprague, Fiske and Schofield raised enough to have at least one of each in classrooms at all grade levels.

"The addition of ELMOs and Smart Boards has enriched our classrooms," Wong said.

Keeping those classrooms filled with the best qualified teachers has been a bit of a challenge, however, Wong said.

Wellesley had approximately 50 professional job openings to fill for next year, and while virtually all are now filled, "we've busted more searches than we have in any other year," Wong said.

She called the quality of the applicant pool "limited," citing the number of teacher retirements statewide as "finally catching up with us."

She also speculated that administrator positions have been hard to fill because of the stress and relatively low pay that come with the position.

She said that since administrators and department heads work through the summer, it may actually mean they are paid less per day than classroom teachers.

But, she and Assistant Superintendent Carol Gregory, who does much of the system's recruiting, stressed Wellesley is still attracting qualified applicants.

"We are struggling with the quality of our applicant pools, not our hires," Wong said.

She also praised several administrators for outstanding performance including Gregory, Becky McFall, who oversees curriculum and Beth Perry, who heads the Performing Arts department. Perry was cited for her independent curriculum review and implementation of an advanced strings offering.

In other business last night, the School Committee voted unanimously to accept the revised anti-bullying policy and the computer acceptable use policy which had been discussed at two previous meetings.

The committee had held off approving the policies pending input from the community, but none was received.