The Community Schools of Frankfort School Board approved a $50,000 grant for the planning of a dual language program at Suncrest Elementary School with an implementation date for the program being expected for the 2025-2026 school year at the Kindergarten level.
Frankfort Schools Director of English Language Learners Lori North approached the school board on Tuesday evening to discuss a grant the corporation was awarded for the implementation of a dual language immersion program at Suncrest Elementary School that would provide a select group of students with the opportunity to begin bilingual education earlier in their lives that is expected to continue throughout their elementary school experience.
“For the past several years, Indiana’s Department of Education has offered a competitive planning grant for schools interested in starting a dual language immersion program,” North said. “Each year, I would look at the grant, and I would look at the list of schools. As of today, I saw 44 schools in the state that have DLI programs, and I knew deep in my heart that Frankfort’s a place that we should do this.”
North stated that with 899 English learners on the roster of the corporation and roughly 50-percent language minority students enrolled, the corporation was a focus of the grantee team during the consideration period. North stated that after debating the implementation of the one-way or two-way dual language program, she settled on the two-way dual language immersion program to provide an opportunity for both native English speakers and native Spanish speakers to adopt a new language.
“If we think about the ‘25-’26 Kindergarten class coming into Suncrest, there would be a classroom comprised of 50% native English speakers and 50% native Spanish speakers, and they would spend half of their day learning content in Spanish and the other half of the day learning content in English, not repeated content but part of their content,” North said. “I chose the two-way because I wanted to give our English speakers the opportunity to learn another language.”
Frankfort Schools Superintendent Dr. Matt Rhoda commented that the implementation of the program will allow for the students of Suncrest Elementary School to begin their educational experiences by learning a new language aside from their native language that could improve their opportunities beyond graduation from Frankfort High School.
“The great thing about it is that we’re giving native English speakers and native Spanish speakers the opportunity to both get a second language, so we’re excited to be able to offer that,” Rhoda said. “We know that the earlier you learn a new language, the better you pick that up, so by offering that to our native English speakers in Kindergarten, they’re going to pick that up fairly quickly, and of course, that gives an opportunity for our native Spanish speakers to learn English.”
The board approved the acceptance of the $50,000 grant from the Indiana Department of Education for the planning stages of the program over the next school year with a planned implementation in the 2025-2026 school year. North stated during her presentation that once the first year of the program is underway, the team at Suncrest will begin to plan for implementation of the program at the first-grade level for the 2026-2027 school year to continue the initial Kindergarten group on a path to bilingualism.
“We approved the planning for it,” Rhoda said. “We don’t anticipate hiring any new teachers unless we don’t have a teacher at that grade level who can teach both English and Spanish.”
The board confirmed that a bilingual Kindergarten teacher is already employed at Suncrest Elementary School, which allows for the corporation to plan for the program to be implemented in the 2025-2026 school year following a planning year without the need for additional hires for the program.