By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
A public school in Princeton could be offering kindergarten in two languages as soon as September in a move to have children learn half their day in English and half in Spanish.
Enrollment will be on a voluntary basis, so parents at Community Park Elementary School will have the option of having their children attend regular kindergarten or its Spanish/English equivalent, the district said Monday.
So far, the district said parents have shown a “high level” of interest. Officials have not ruled out using a lottery system to select pupils if demand exceeds the number of available seats.
”But we don’t know what demand is at this point,” said Assistant Superintendent Bonnie Lehet on Monday.
Princeton is following the lead of other schools in New Jersey and the country that teach children in a dual language immersion program. According to officials, the district plans to follow a “50/50” model so that the school day is broken up in half between the two languages.
Kindergartners attend school from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. like all other pupils. There are three kindergarten classes, with class sizes of about 17 to 18 children, said school principal Dineen Gruchacz.
Ms. Lehet said the program would work by having two classes of kindergartners rotate from their teacher in the English portion of the day to their teacher in the Spanish portion and vice versa. Actual course work instruction would be in Spanish; those courses still need to be determined, but they are likely to be math and science. English/language arts would be taught in English, Ms. Lehet said.
One unanswered question, however, is when the program starts. District officials are mulling whether to begin this September or wait another year.
”That is the million dollar question,” said school board member Andrea Spalla.
Community Park is in a section of town that draws from the Latino population that lives in the Witherspoon neighborhood, but officials said that was not the reason the school was chosen. Rather, the district said it surveyed which of its schools would be ready for a program like this and found that Community Park was interested.
”I think we stepped forward as a school that wants to be at the forefront,” Ms. Gruchacz said.
The district noted the school has a diverse mix of students who come from around the world. According to the Community Park’s annual state performance report, the enrollment during the 2012-13 school year was 18.3 percent Hispanic and 62.1 percent white. Spanish was the primary language spoken at home by 13.1 percent of students, the report showed.
Spanish was selected as the language for the immersion program since it is already taught at all elementary schools.
Until 2010, the school district had Spanish instruction in grades k-5, but budgetary reasons led to that being scaled back to grades 2-5, said Priscilla Russel, district supervisor of world languages. Some schools still offer some Spanish in the lower grades.
Kindergartners who are not in the immersion program still would get Spanish language instruction, Ms. Gruchacz said.
Plans call for Community Park kindergartners to continue receiving bilingual education as they ascend the grade ladder at the school.
”Students in the immersion program will have Spanish language arts and English language arts with the intent to develop literacy in both languages,” Ms. Lehet said. “We anticipate that students will leave grade five with proficiency in the Intermediate range as defined by the American Council of the Teachers of Foreign Language.”
She said that level is higher than what most high school students nationally attain after they graduate.
Officials began discussing bi-lingual kindergarten during the tenure of now former Superintendent Judith A. Wilson; the actual planning got started this current school year, Ms. Lehet said.

