Southside Park

If your child is Chinese they will do fine here. We have had several instances of racism from staff and children. The principal and teachers did nothing, saying the child didn’t mean to call my child the “n” word. The principal seems to genuinely care about the school but will always back up the teachers no matter what and will not meet with a parent. The immersion program starts slowly with barely any Chinese in kindergarten and then in first grade it takes off. They expect the parents to teach the children at home which is why an entrance exam is given to any child wishing to enter the dual immersion program. There is a Spanish dual immersion program that they could take a few pointers off of Where they only speak the language in kindergarten then they go to 80% Spanish 20% English in first grade and And it continues until they are at 50-50. This school barely speaks any Chinese to the students in class but expect them to know the language. They also assign over 25 pages of homework for the week but the afterschool program does not require the children to do any homework, putting the kids in front of a television as often as they can. If you are a working parent it will be very difficult to get this homework done and assist in the level that the school expects. If you’re a single full time working parent good luck. In kindergarten and first grade they had large project assignments to be done at home as well. With the dual immersion it feels like they are hiring based on language instead of skills with children. Most of the dual immersion teachers don’t seem to like children very much despite having their own and if they were trained on teaching methods they seem to have forgotten everything they were taught. My other child learned more Chinese in 1 year at churchill middle school than my 3rd grade William land child has learned since kindergarten. There is one tutor in the afterschool program that has to work their time between every child. If you would like your child to learn a second language through public school system and it doesn’t matter that it is mandarin I would recommend the Spanish dual immersion program at the elementary school off of Fulton. If I could do it over I would’ve placed my daughter there but you have to start dual immersion in kindergarten unless you already speak the language.