Dear Lyseth Families,

Thank you to everyone who came to last week’s family meeting session on the Lyseth Spanish Immersion Program.  We know family schedules are busy these days and Mr. Gomez and I were glad to have so many participants join us.  We also want to thank our Lyseth leaders, Ms. Goodall and Ms. Edlund, for their preparation, including the provision of child care, and for their dedication to the Lyseth community. 

For those of you who were unable to attend the meeting, Mr. Gomez and I have updated the Lyseth Spanish Immersion webpage with the slide deck from the meeting. We will also be adding a Questions and Answers document within the next week.

To summarize the communication that we provided at the meeting, it centered around short-term adjustments for next year and the development of a long-term vision for immersion programming in our district. 

Short-Term Adjustments: Our short-term adjustments allow us to maintain Spanish Immersion programming, set appropriate space for other whole-school programming, and plan further ahead for changes. Last year, we combined 4th- and 5th-grade Spanish Immersion classes into a multiage classroom of 27 students with two teachers.  We will continue that practice in the 2025-2026 school year, and we will also have a multiage kindergarten and 1st-grade class of 22 students, with strategic staff and curriculum support for our youngest Spanish Immersion students. 

Future Adjustments: Next year, our district will be engaging in a strategic initiative focused on multilingual programming, which will include an immersion program review.  In the FY2026 budget, we have resources to allow us to bring in experts to audit our programming for multilingual learners and support us in developing a plan for the future.  This work will include opportunities for community engagement, and we will ensure that Lyseth representatives are included in that. While we need to go through that process, we are forecasting that it will result in a change in the elementary immersion model from the current one-way, dual language immersion model to a two-way, dual language immersion model. As we explained at the meeting, the one-way dual language immersion program we have now primarily serves native speakers of English who are learning Spanish as a second language. A two-way program would integrate both native English speakers and native Spanish speakers, with both groups of students learning both languages.

Space Constraints Context: Lyseth continues to be one of our schools that is functioning near the limits of its building capacity.  If you have been following the work of the Board’s Attendance Boundaries Advisory Committee, you know that space utilization at Lyseth is at 80.1%, the highest rate for any of our elementary schools.  At Lyseth, there are 25 regular size rooms and one half-size room for regular grade-level classrooms and the Environmental Literacy special.  There are also two larger rooms designed for Art and Music.  For the upcoming 2025-2026 school year, we know we will need 20 regular English classrooms.  We are reserving 4 regular size classrooms for Spanish Immersion. The 25th regular classroom is currently reserved for Environmental Literacy.  This leaves the half-size room unassigned at this time.  This could be used as a breakout space for the multiage 4-5 Spanish Immersion class.  However, if Lyseth kindergarten enrollment follows the same pattern as it did for 2024-2025, then we will need to add a kindergarten classroom and Environmental Literacy would be moved to the half-size classroom, and the breakout space for the multiage 4-5 Spanish Immersion class would revert to the room behind the cafeteria. The exact plan for room assignments will have to be finalized at a later date, as we learn what final enrollment numbers will be. 

We will continue to keep you updated as we move through the Spring and as we make plans for the long-term.

In the meantime, if you have an entering Kindergarten child who you would like to have join the Spanish Immersion program, we are asking that Lyseth community parents submit application forms by April 15.  The online application form will be available on the Spanish Immersion webpage starting Wednesday of next week.

Sincerely,

Angela Atkinson Duina
Assistant Superintendent, Elementary Schools

and

Carlos Gomez
Elementary Director of Language Development