A meeting between Valparaiso school officials and Parkview Elementary School parents this week about the school’s Dual Language Immersion program, as well as a follow-up letter by Superintendent Julie Lauck, left parents with more questions than answers as the program’s future continues to shift.
Parents said the Tuesday evening meeting lasted about 20 minutes and while they had hoped to ask questions, they were directed to submit them online. School officials denied the Post-Tribune’s request to attend the meeting, noting it was for parents and guardians only, but did provide Lauck’s letter.
“I think everybody has their own idea about what’s happening and we don’t have any answers,” said Parkview parent Meredith Mohlke, who has a son in third grade and drives him to Parkview for the program from where they live in the Northview Elementary School neighborhood.
School officials announced in December that the Spanish program, which started during the 2015-2016 school year as a pilot, would end at the conclusion of this school year and simultaneously announced that Principal Anne Wodetzki was resigning.
The backlash from parents who support the program and Wodetzki was swift and vocal, with a rally at the school and parents flooding a school board meeting after the announcement. School officials announced on Feb. 10 that the program would remain in place for another school year as they decide how to move forward.
Lauck’s letter to Parkview families, emailed Tuesday, said the program will undergo a “reset” for the 2021-22 school year.
“This reset and new first year of a three-year pilot will come after the team spends the remainder of this year and all of next year designing a 50/50 2-way program,” she wrote. “The decision to move forward with this model is in large part to satisfy the original intent of the program and serve the needs of our English Learner population.”
The program, she said, will become a “district intervention strategy rather than just a special program for Parkview.”
Mohlke noted this is the third iteration from administrators of what the program might look like in as many months, and parents don’t have clarification on how children in the DLI program and the English Learner population from throughout the district both will be served at the school.
Those previously involved in the program said it was started in part to serve Spanish-speaking children in the Parkview neighborhood and create a sense of community and cultural diversity among the school’s students.
“”They keep making decisions, they keep introducing a new pathway but it feels on our end like it’s inconsistent,” said Mohlke, who is part of a Bilingual Advisory Committee that will review the program. She added the constant shifting leaves parents panicked and anxious.
Open dialogue with parents from the administration instead of one-way dialogue, she added, “would create peace and transparency.”
Betsy Barger has two daughters at Parkview. Redistricting a few years ago would have shifted her children to newly opened Heavilin Elementary School but the family opted to stay at Parkview for DLI.
Barger, who like Mohlke attended the meeting at Parkview, said parents prepared questions to ask at the meeting before being told they would have to be submitted online.
Families like hers who are inter-district transfers to Parkview just want stability for their kids, she said.
“It’s very hard to have any trust at this point. We need that. We’re tired of trying to read between the lines of every meeting and email,” she said, wondering what the “reset” of the program is. ” We just want transparency like everyone else.”
Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
