Parents of students in JCPS Spanish classes are unsure about their children’s future in the district

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – As thousands of families prepare to decide which Jefferson County school to send their children to, a group of parents participating in the Spanish District program say they are unsure what their children’s future might look like.

This follows JCPS in September, he decided to discontinue his Spanish language course at Highland Middle School due to lack of funds and records. As a solution, JCPS began offering students online classes to make up for this.

In a statement to WAVE News, JCPS said the teacher in charge assured the parents would be “very pleased with their child’s development.”

But parents like Laura Moyer, whose son is an eighth-grader at Highland Middle, say that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Taking worksheets and having them go back and look at the alphabet and numbers is really offensive,” she said. “He feels like he has been let down by the school and the district.”

Moyer’s son attended the Spanish Immersion program at Hawthorne Elementary School for six years. She added that the experience was important to his family.

“We are a family that strongly believes that the world is a big place and we all have a part in it,” she explained. “And we thought that in this world where Spanish is so central that, frankly, we would be doing our child a disservice if we didn’t take advantage of this opportunity.”

Highland High School offered advanced Spanish courses that connected students in the Spanish Immersion program at Hawthorne Elementary School with students moving on to Atherton High School.

Dr. Laura Escobar-Ratliff, president of the Parent-Teacher Student Association (PTSA) at Highland Middle School and parent of another Spanish student at the school, said eliminating the course created a gap. JCPS has already made the decision to curtail Highland Middle’s Spanish studies program in 2022.

Escobar-Ratliff mentioned that a group of parents tried to get JCPS to reinstate the classroom.

“We were blocked throughout the entire process,” she added. “We attended school management meetingswe sent emails, made phone calls and received the same general response as opposed to a substantive conversation.”

According to Escobar-Ratliff, the group found potential solutions to the problem. One such solution is to build partnerships with the community and corporations.

“There are a lot of corporations, companies and organizations that would like to see this continue,” she explained. “We just need to make those connections, and we’re happy to help achieve that goal, build those connections, and make those arguments.”

Escobar-Ratliff said money should not be a reason to opt out of the program.

“The average cost for a teacher is $75,000 to $76,000,” she mentioned. “Tell me we can’t make this up to continue such an important program that impacts the trajectory of sixth and eighth grades from elementary school success to high school success by continuing on that path. That’s pennies in the total budget. We can do better and we want to help the district, but the district needs to meet us.

For some parents, like Leslie Rodriguez, the opportunity at Highland influenced the decision of which school their children would attend. In her case, she made sure to move to a neighborhood near Hawthorne Elementary School.

“My husband is Chilean, so my children are half Chilean,” she noted. “It’s very important to us to keep Latino culture in their lives, and learning Spanish is obviously a huge part of that, so we wanted them to grow up in an environment where the Spanish language is celebrated and accepted.”

Now, with the Spanish students’ future unclear and decision-making time running out, Rodriguez said she may no longer have the motivation to come to Highland Middle.

“I’m going to start shopping and looking for other locations,” she added.

It’s a feeling Moyer knows all too well.

“It’s hard for us to go into the process of assessing high school opportunities and really believe that what the school says it is investing in and will invest in will still be available,” she commented. “It is not too late for the district to correct this mistake.”

In a statement to WAVE News, JCPS said restoring in-person Spanish tutors and elective classes to students at Highland or another location “is simply not possible this year.” They said that decisions about next year’s course offerings for all schools will be made in the spring.