PETITION TO THE SAN CARLOS AND BELMONT/REDWOOD SHORES SCHOOL DISTRICTS TO PROVIDE OUR CHILDREN THE OPPORTUNITY TO BECOME BILINGUAL On December 12, 2006, the San Francisco Unified School Board passed resolution number 610-24A1 which resolved "[t]hat the Board of Education is committed to making all possible efforts to provide in an orderly fashion, every child pre-K to 12, the opportunity to become bilingual and bicultural, to graduate from the SFUSD fluent in English and another language through a variety of approaches..." Among other supporting factors, the resolution cited that: The world we live in has become increasingly smaller and people of different languages and cultures are being brought ever closer under the forces of globalization; Multilingualism has become increasingly a life-style and an indispensable skill as people of different languages and cultures come into frequent, close, and sustained contacts with each other through jobs, business, travel, entertainment, and sports, etc.;Preparing students for our world of multilingual and multiculturalism has become an integral and indispensable part of any education process in most developed countries and in more and more developing countries; It has been repeatedly proven by studies that young children acquire second and even third language skills with ease and with no demonstrable linguistic interference or retardation in the mastery of their native tongues and in all subjects...; There are over 50 dual language immersion programs in the Bay Area, including in Cupertino, Hayward, Fremont, Berkeley, Oakland, Redwood City, San Mateo, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Burlingame, Mountain View, Pleasanton, San Francisco, San Jose, and Campbell. However, while otherwise excellent, public schools in the Belmont/Redwood Shores School District and the San Carlos School District do not offer languages in the elementary school. We urge the Belmont/Redwood Shores and the San Carlos School Districts to work with interested parents to make all possible efforts to provide our children the opportunity to become fluent in English and another language through a variety of approaches. We acknowledge the difficult budgetary constraints that the School Districts face this year in particular. We nonetheless believe that, if we make it a priority, working together we can make language options available to children, including children in grades K-5, in the coming 2009/2010 school year and beyond, without adversely affecting other programs, and can expand those options over time.

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