Acton and Boxborough have earned a reputation for the high quality of our local public schools. However, there is one realm in which our children are currently being poorly served, both relative to other communities in this area and in terms of preparation for life in an increasingly global world. At present there are regular classes offered only in a limited range of Romance languages—when my daughter Julia started 7th grade two years ago, she could only choose French or Spanish. In the world we live in, facility in non-Romance languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Japanese, or Arabic, is increasingly recognized as vital. Most of the good school systems in our area already have broader foreign language options than we do. For example, Chinese classes are currently offered in more than sixty communities in Massachusetts, including many of the schools against which our students compete academically and athletically, including Concord-Carlisle, Lexington, Newton, Belmont, Brookline, Wayland, and Needham. It is high time for AB students to have other foreign language options available, and Chinese seems the best place to start. Chinese is far and away the most widely spoken language on earth, and in business, science, diplomacy, environmental pollution, and many other realms, Americans dealing with Chinese will shape the future of the planet. Acton is fortunate already in having an important resource in the Acton Chinese Language School, but their program, which only involves an hour and a half of learning Chinese once a week, cannot accomplish what a regular series of Chinese language classes in our public schools can. (Julia can testify to the difference, since the few Chinese words and phrases she recalls from 3 years in ACLS have been buried under the rigorous French lessons of the last two plus years.)

An informal group of AB parents concerned about this issue began meeting a few weeks ago to develop the case for increasing foreign language options in our schools, starting with Chinese. We made a presentation to the AB Regional School Committee at its meeting on January 3rd. We have been collecting information on how other public school systems in our area launched their Chinese language programs and investigating the special resources available to assist public school systems interested in starting Chinese. We are also discussing how to measure the demand for additional foreign language options and for Chinese specifically, in Acton and Boxborough, and a survey of the foreign language preferences for next year of parents of current sixth graders is on the drawing boards. I am pleased to report that we have received some encouraging responses from the School Committee and from Superintendent Bill Ryan, and we have learned that some funds for beginning Chinese classes had already been included in the preliminary budgets for both R.J. Grey and ABRHS next year. However, it remains to be seen whether adding Chinese will remain a high priority in the AB final school budget and whether Chinese eventually will be developed into a full-fledged set of courses starting in seventh grade at least, as with French and Spanish. I encourage all Acton and Boxborough residents concerned about our limited foreign language offerings, and who would like to support the effort to add Chinese to the regular curricula of our schools, to get in touch with me or with Dick Calandrella at dickcalandrella@earthlink.net

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