As the District 65 Board of Education getting ready to talk Monday about the end of the Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies, Melissa Rosenzweig was out in front of the district offices, passing out flyers.
Rosenzweig, parent of a Bessie Rhodes first-grader, has been actively trying, along with other moms and dads, to convince the school board not to close their K-8 school, which features dual language/two-way immersion (TWI) in English and Spanish.
The flyers announced a demonstration, scheduled for April 22.
That’s when the board holds its first of three, state-mandated public hearings on closing a school building, in this case, Rhodes.
The D65 board had previously agreed, informally, to close Rhodes after the 2025-26 school year, but then learned that the state requires three public hearings before an official vote.
So Rhodes parents are not giving up.
“MARCH WITH US,” the flyers said, “to save District 65’s only bilingual school.”
The protesters will meet at the district office building (JEH Education Center) at 4:30 p.m. on the 22nd, shuttle over to Bessie Rhodes, and then march back to JEH in time to attend the 7 p.m. board meeting/public hearing.
While Rosenzweig was passing out flyers, the board talked about expanding District 65’s dual language program, at Bessie Rhodes while it’s still open, and then to other middle schools.
As it looks now, 6th grade dual language will be added to Rhodes in 2024-25 (currently the program is K-5), and 7th grade in 2025-26, still at the Rhodes building.
In 2026-27, assuming Rhodes closes, its entire grade 6-8 bilingual program would switch to Haven Middle School.
Also in 2026-27, the district hopes to start English/Spanish 6th grade at another middle school (to be determined), then add on 7th and 8th grades in subsequent years.
In 2027-28, the third and final middle school would start dual language, also adding a grade a year.
Maybe.
Dual language expansion beyond Haven Middle School “will be determined by what families want,” said board member Biz Lindsay-Ryan.
It depends on demand.
“We can’t provide people with a robust dual language program if only four people sign up,” Lindsay-Ryan explained.
“Maybe people won’t sign up now because they want to wait and see how it works” in a few years, she added.
It can seem a bit overwhelming, particularly for Rhodes families, who were once promised a “school within a school” at the new 5th Ward building, but that was dropped due to cost overruns. (The 5th Ward school is still supposed to open for 2026-27, but only K-5 instead of K-8).
So, to help current Rhodes families as well as others interested in bilingual education, the district is holding a “Community Conversation” about the future of middle school dual language programs, this Saturday, April 13, at 10:30 a.m, at Bessie Rhodes.
In keeping with the purpose of dual language school, Spanish interpretation will be provided.
The final two public hearings on closing Rhodes are on May 6 and May 20, with a final, actual vote on shutting the building set for June 10.
When you elect people to a School Board based on your “feelings” and their virtue signaling, in lieu of real skills and ideas. Such as, the skills to prioritize real vs perceived educational obstacles and their financial or management of people leadership qualifications this is what you should expect.
They don’t have the ability to hire a competent Superintendent, why would you be surprised by any of the shenanigans that lead you here.
Running Forward only to go Backwards…
Biz Lindsay-Ryan does not take language immersion seriously, when it has proven academic benefits for children. (Salomé, Florian, et al. “Bilingual Advantage in L3 Vocabulary Acquisition: Evidence of a Generalized Learning Benefit among Classroom-Immersion Children.” Bilingualism (Cambridge, England), vol. 25, no. 2, 2022, pp. 242–55, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728921000687.) We need a school board that supports early dual language acquisition. The current board has to go.