School board considers centralizing or phasing out middle‑school dual language immersion

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. Wilkerson noted bilingual social studies teachers — particularly those certified to teach U.S. history and civics — are difficult to hire and retain.

The two options aim to address those limits. Option 1 would consolidate all DLI feeder programs into Virginia Beach Middle School, shift the middle‑school immersion core content away from social studies toward math or science (better aligned to elementary DLI), and retain immersion Spanish courses. Staff estimated net transportation for out‑of‑zone students under consolidation would be about $186,000 per year compared with roughly $90,000 currently. Wilkerson said consolidation should make recruitment easier because Spanish‑speaking teacher candidates are more likely to be certified in math or science than social studies.

Option 2 would phase out middle‑school DLI beginning with the current fifth‑grade cohort; those students would attend their zoned middle schools and regular Spanish 1 would be made available in sixth grade. Staff estimated phasing out the middle‑school program would save roughly $90,000 per year once the current cohorts cycle out, but students would no longer access content‑based instruction in Spanish and would not have immersion Spanish 1–3 in middle school.

Board members and parents raised questions about student progression and equity. One parent who addressed the board said DLI students are often academically ahead in Spanish and asked why an “immersion level” Spanish 1 option could not be offered at zoned middle schools. “Offering regular Spanish 1 in sixth grade, if we phase out the program, is sort of the best we can do, right, with the staffing that we have available,” Wilkerson said, adding that immersion Spanish 1–3 “gives our students curriculum that’s more appropriate to their proficiency level.”

Board debate focused on tradeoffs among program quality, transportation and cost. Several board members asked staff to develop a third option — accelerated or differentiated Spanish at feeder schools — and to provide more detailed budget and staffing scenarios. Vice Chair Weems and other members asked how an RFP/solicitation or other procurement approach might affect timelines and cost if a new schools strategy were pursued.

The board did not decide Sept. 9. A motion by School Board Member Rogers to return the item to the Oct. 14 workshop for additional analysis passed 11‑0. Staff asked the board to select an option at the Sept. 23 meeting for implementation beginning with the 2027–28 school year.