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School board considers centralizing or phasing out middle‑school dual language immersion
Summary
Virginia Beach City Public Schools presented two options for its middle‑school dual language immersion (DLI) program — consolidate all DLI students to Virginia Beach Middle School or phase out middle‑school DLI and offer regular Spanish 1 at neighborhood middle schools — after staff warned of staffing, scheduling and curriculum challenges.
Virginia Beach — School district staff recommended two options on Sept. 9 to address staffing, scheduling and curriculum shortfalls in the district’s middle‑school dual language immersion program and asked the board to select a path at its Sept. 23 meeting. The two choices are to consolidate middle‑school DLI to a single site at Virginia Beach Middle School or to phase out middle‑school DLI and offer regular Spanish 1 at feeder middle schools beginning with this year’s fifth graders.
School officials said the recommendation matters because the middle‑school model, as currently implemented, is hard to staff and doesn’t align with the elementary DLI content. “Staffing is the number one challenge for DLI programs, and this is true for middle school,” Crystal Wilkerson, director of K–12 and gifted programs, told the board.…
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