Parents say they were misled by CBE over Mandarin junior high program

Parents of students in the Calgary Board of Education Mandarin bilingual program in the city's deep south want the board to think again about not providing a junior high program next year.

Darlene Casten has two children in Grades 1 and 4 in the program and says she's worried about its future.

She says parentswere told by the CBE this fall that children will have to travel to a school in the north of the city next year if they want to continue Mandarin beyond Grade 6.

"That bus ride would be an hour to an hour-and-a-half each way," said Casten. "We had no idea that this was coming."

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"We did aFacebookpoll and 90% of parents said they wouldn't bus their kids there. But the greater concern is that parents who have kids in lower grades will start dropping out because they don't see it as a viable program anymore when their kids can't go all the way to Grade 9," saidCasten.

Han Phung moved to the south from the northwest so his kids could attend the program. Now he's facing having to move back to the north.

"If this gets cancelled then essentially what I did was for nothing. It's almost wrong that we were promised this," said Phung.

The CBE says right now it has the space for a junior high program but not the teachers or student numbers it needs to be viable and that it didn't promise parents a program.

"I'd say a promise is a pretty strong word," said CBE'sarea five director Sydney Smith.

"We have been indicating that there will be an opportunity for them to continue their programing and it would have been our preference to have done it closer to home for them and I'm sure you realize the difficulty in starting a program in a school with only seven students in a class," Smith said.

She says the board will carry out an expression of interest early in 2017and if they have sustainable numbers in those grade levels, then it will open a program next fall.