Palo Alto Schools to Offer Mandarin
By Hubert Huang
PALO ALTO, Feb. 2- Over the years, Palo Alto has become famous for its expensive real estate, exemplary public schools and the "Palo Alto Process" a nickname for the excruciating rate at which change takes place.
It's a concept Grace Mah, who founded the organization Palo Alto Chinese Education in 2001, has become well-acquainted with in her quest to convince the school district to add Mandarin education to their curriculum.
But now, after more than four years of cajoling, she appears to have her first big victory as this coming fall the district's high schools will be offering Mandarin as an option for students. And while district Associate Superintendent Marilyn Cook has not officially approved the Mandarin classes, many believe the official decision is no more than formality at this point.
According to Palo Alto school board member Barb Mitchell, Mandarin classes will be offered but the exact number of sections and where they will take place will not be known until students from the districts two high schools select their classes for the coming year. These final details will be based on the location and number of students who register for Mandarin.
The addition of Mandarin does not, however, mean that one of the foreign languages currently offered- French, Spanish, German and Japanese - will be removed. Similar to Mandarin, their offering will be determined by the number of students who choose the class.
"The net effect would probably be to reduce [the number of classes for] other foreign languages because there would be a substitution effect," said Dana Tom, school board member for the Palo Alto Unified School District.
But although Mah is pleased that Mandarin classes will again be part of the high school curriculum, budget shortfalls lead the district to cut foreign language offerings several years ago, she has no intention of stopping the push for Mandarin education at this point.
Her ultimate goal is the creation of a Mandarin immersion program analogous to the Spanish immersion program the district started in 1995. The Spanish immersion program runs from kindergarten through eighth grade and uses a curriculum that is similar to traditional schools in the district except that they are taught in Spanish.
An engineer by trade, Mah spent 18 years working in the high-tech field at Hewlett Packard and Agilent. But she became interested in the idea of language immersion after attending a talk about the benefits of bilingual education by the Parents Club of Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
And she noticed that each year at the Parents Club's meeting on bilingual education, the room got increasingly more crowded, until it became a standing-room only event. It then occurred to her that there might be enough interest among Palo Alto parents to convince the district to create a Mandarin immersion program. So the following year she distributed flyers to attendees to see if they would be interested in pursuing this.
From this initial group of parents, Palo Alto Chinese Education formed. And since November of 2001 when the organization formed, it has grown to over 100 parents who push the district to add Mandarin immersion. But despite the success of the Spanish immersion program, a demand from parents in the community support from the majority of the school board, the group has been unable to build the consensus in the community that is often needed in Palo Alto to spur the district to change.
"The problem we had two years ago was finances," Mah said. "The perception was that the new program would cost a lot of money."
To the contrary, she says that since the program does not add, but rather shifts students from a traditional program to the immersion program, the district has already paid for the classroom and teacher's salary. In addition, since the curriculum for immersion has already been developed for Spanish, the only additional overhead for the program is the purchase of Chinese-language materials for the classes. And the cost of purchasing these materials would be borne by the parents with children in the program.
Still, she says the district and Superintendent Mary Frances Callan, in particular, remain skeptical of her explanation.
"It's a really hard thing to see even if you keep saying zero cost, zero cost." Mah said.
However, Mah is quick to clarify that by saying the program does not increase costs for the district, she does not mean it will not increase work for the district.
Conact Hubert Huang at hhboy77@stanford.edu
