Families Hear About McKinley School’s Planned Dual Language Immersion Program

By David James Heiss

Redlands News Collective

McKinley Elementary School will house the Redlands Unified School District’s first Dual Language Immersion program beginning this fall for kindergarten and transitional kindergarten students.

Photo by David James Heiss

Principal Minerva Castorena talks to visitors during an information session at McKinley Elementary School.

About 30 people attended a Jan. 28 information session at the school to learn about the program. Sonja Balingit, director of special projects, said the district has been planning the launch since 2019.

McKinley offers a “wonderful opportunity for this community,” Balingit said. While current plans call for the program to run through fifth grade at McKinley, the district intends to expand it through middle and high school. Additional sites and teachers for those levels have not yet been selected.

“We firmly believe in the benefits of bilingualism,” Balingit said. “Students demonstrate critical thinking skills, and it fosters tolerance and understanding across cultures.”

The district selected Spanish for the program because it is the second-most common language spoken by its students. District figures show 11.66% of students speak Spanish, followed by 1.18% who speak Arabic and 0.82% who speak Vietnamese.

Minerva Castorena, the former principal of Mission Elementary School, will lead the program at McKinley. Castorena, whose own family has participated in dual immersion, outlined the technical structure of the rollout.

The program will debut with two sections of transitional kindergarten and two full-day kindergarten classrooms, totaling 68 students. Once the program reaches fifth grade, the district anticipates enrollment will grow to 330 students.

The curriculum uses a "90-10" model:

·        Year 1: 90% of instruction is in Spanish.

·        Year 2: 80% in Spanish.

·        Year 3: 70% in Spanish.

·        Year 6 (fifth grade): Instruction is split 50-50 between Spanish and English.

Extracurricular activities, including physical education, art, and music, will be conducted in English. The program will run alongside existing McKinley curriculum.

Enrollment priority will be given to students within the McKinley attendance area, siblings of current students, and children of district employees. Intradistrict transfers will also be considered. Children entering first grade or higher are not eligible to start the program.

Balingit said the district aims to balance enrollment between Spanish-speaking and non-Spanish-speaking students. She noted that interest has been “overwhelmingly high.”

Families will undergo an assessment to determine if potential students have the academic aptitude to handle the rigor of a dual immersion program. That process is expected to begin in a few weeks, with the district aiming to notify selected families by May.

Castorena said families are asked to commit to the program through fifth grade to ensure continuity and prevent disruptions to the learning process.

Among the attendees was Edward Ferrari, an English professor at Crafton Hills College. He and his wife, Jan Andres, hope their 4-year-old daughter will qualify.

“When we first moved to California, we read that a lot of people speak Spanish, but in my neighborhood the only people who speak Spanish are the gardeners,” Ferrari said. “We need more bilingual integration.”