A group of Pueblo Elementary School students will be spend half of their school days next school year learning in Spanish.
Arizona Republic
February 15, 2007
Author: Ofelia Madrid, The Arizona Republic Estimated printed pages: 2

A group of Pueblo Elementary School students will be spend half of their school days next school year learning in Spanish.

Pueblo is the first school in the Scottsdale Unified School District to create a foreign-language immersion program designed to teach Spanish to monolingual English speakers.

The Scottsdale school board approved the program Tuesday. It is scheduled to launch in August with first-graders.

Pueblo school officials modeled the program after a similar program at Cave Creek's Desert Willow Elementary School.

Since participating students must be fluent in English, officials don't anticipate any legal challenges tied to Proposition 203, which requires teaching Spanish speakers in English.

Pueblo's Principal Terri Kellen devised the plan to combat the school's shrinking enrollment. Scottsdale's recent condominium conversions and the neighborhood's aging demographics have left 480 students at the 700 student-capacity school, officials said.

The free program at the 6320 N. 82nd St. campus will start with 50 first-graders. Half of the students would live within the school's boundaries, and the rest would be out-of-boundary students accepted through open enrollment, administrators said.

Math, social studies and science would be taught in Spanish, while language arts classes would be offered in English.

"The goal is by the end of sixth grade, that they can read, write and speak in Spanish," Kellen said.

The voluntary program already has a healthy waiting list, she added.

Plans also include offering French and Spanish as 2008 summer school courses, which would be open to all Pueblo students.
Edition: Final Chaser
Section: Scottsdale Republic North
Page: 4

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Record Number: pho164506776