Letter to the Editor: Scarsdale Board of Education To Vote on Whether to Include Mandarin in the Middle School

This article was submitted to Scarsdale10583 for publication by Claire He, Brice Kirkendall-Rodríguez, Mayra Kirkendall-Rodríguez, Joanne Teoh, Wanna Zhong, and Julie Zhu

Last week, Scarsdale Board of Education President Leila Maude exercised great leadership in requesting that board members vote on December 14th whether to include Mandarin in the Scarsdale Middle School starting in 2016. The Mandarin in the Middle School Initiative Team (MMSIT) would also like to thank her for the level of public accountability that she has exhibited in requesting that each board member explain her or his position at the time of the vote. Additionally, we are grateful that she acknowledged that our group submitted a memorandum with research and analysis to advocate for the importance of including Mandarin in the middle school. We encourage Scarsdale residents to attend the December 14th meeting and support us in increasing and improving foreign language choice and instruction in Scarsdale schools.

Scarsdale parents have been strongly advocating to include Mandarin in the Scarsdale school district for over a decade. It took our predecessors over five years to persuade the administration and the school board to start implementing Mandarin in the high school. In 2008, a World Language committee assembled by the Scarsdale school district recommended including Mandarin in the Middle School and offered suggestions as to how this could be done. A June 2008 New York Times article mentioned that Scarsdale would be including Mandarin in the middle school. Seven years have transpired and Mandarin is still not in the Middle School. In many cases, the children of those first Mandarin parent advocates have graduated without ever having been given a well-deserved chance to study Mandarin in Scarsdale.

Scarsdale is now significantly behind numerous school districts in the tri-state area which are already offering Mandarin at the middle school and sometimes even at the elementary level.

Nearby New Rochelle offers Mandarin starting in elementary school. Additionally, in several cities in New York state such as Jericho, Old Bethpage, Pasadena, Plainview, Syosset, and five elementary schools in New York City, students can begin studying Mandarin as early as kindergarten. In Linden, New Jersey Mandarin also instruction starts in the elementary schools. Back in 2010, Linden's superintendent stated in The Wall Street Journal that 'offering Chinese was a leap of faith, "in a working-class town that has no significant number of Chinese." Now, about 400 elementary school children in the Linden school district are studying Mandarin.

Most nearby middle schools offer three languages, and Mandarin is often one of them. In Croton-Harmon, students in the fifth grade can start studying Mandarin, French, or Spanish. In Brewster, middle school students have a choice of Italian, Mandarin, and Spanish. Mamaroneck requires all sixth graders to take Mandarin, Spanish and French. Then in the seventh grade, students can pick one language on which to focus.

Three nearby middle schools offer four foreign languages in the middle school. Rye Middle School and Pelham Middle School offer French, Mandarin, Latin, and Spanish starting in the sixth grade. In Rye, students are permitted to study two foreign languages and foreign language courses meet daily. White Plains middle schools offer students a choice of Mandarin, Italian, French and Spanish. Understanding the importance of leveling for different skill sets, White Plains offers different Spanish courses for native and non-native speakers.

In both middle schools in Westport, Connecticut, students can choose Mandarin, French or Spanish. Mandarin instruction there began in 2010 and is taught every day for 50 minutes each session.

Princeton John Witherspoon Middle School recently added Mandarin to its French and Spanish offerings; Mandarin begins in the seventh grade.

In Great Neck, New York, both middle schools offer Mandarin. Great Neck South offers four languages, French, Latin, Mandarin, and Spanish. Great Neck North offers five languages, the highest number of any public middle school in the tri-state area that we were able to find in our research. Middle school students at Great Neck North have the choice of French, Hebrew, Latin, Mandarin, and Spanish. ''Long Island is by far the most outstanding region, with more elementary school foreign language programs than any other area in the state,'' said Harriet Barnett, co-chairwoman of the Early Foreign Language Committee for the New York State Association of Foreign Language Teachers. ''Long Island is a leader in what's becoming a national trend.''

Some nearby middle schools do not offer Mandarin, but do offer three language choices to their students. Sleepy Hollow Middle School offers French, Italian, and Spanish, while both middle schools in Chappaqua offer French, Spanish, and Latin.

Moreover, top area private schools, whose students compete with ours for college admission, have been meeting the need for Mandarin instruction, in some cases for over a decade. The more Scarsdale waits to include Mandarin in the middle school, the more difficult and possibly more expensive will it become to lure the best and the brightest Mandarin instructor to this district.