Gutiérrez raises equity in paid immersion programs

And on that, this will be my last question related to this topic.

I know that, for example, in my district, there are a number of schools that offer immersion as well in other languages.

But in every instance, you know, parents are paying for this.

And I know that there is an interest for many parents of all different sorts of income.

They want to enroll their child.

They just can't afford it.

How are you all thinking about...

Expansion and ensuring equitable access to multilingual education in early childhood for all families.

Because I feel like in some neighborhoods, this is where you'll see immersion programs that are usually not Spanish, right?

It's like French or Japanese, you know?

But how can we ensure equity?

Because I think parents...

Want to do that.

And more than anything, they want to be able to ensure that their child is like learning another language, because like Gail said, we should we should already be doing that.

I think this is connected to just the focus on expanding child care options on, you know, addressing

of course, affordability broadly, but also making sure that we're providing programs that families want.

So we are intentional in working with community-based programs.

looking for opportunities where if we are able to expand, then we're able to work with more programs that might offer different types of dual language settings for young children.

But I will just say, we know that there is a lot of demand and interest for different types of multilingual programs.

And as you can hear from any of our responses, this is a priority for the chancellor, for the mayor, and making sure that we're working together across as many different options and making sure that principals and schools and superintendents,

if they hear of a need that we're working together to offer programs that the families are looking for.

And if I could just add, we also are very intentional with understanding that the purpose of bilingual education programs are, again, to support the multilingual learner.

And if we're thinking about expansion and what the community needs are, at the end of the day, it's what that community needs for the multilingual learner that lives in that community.

So if there's a significant population of students whose home language is Russian, then we're going to think about that when we're considering expansion.

While monolingual learners benefit from those programs, multilingual learners depend on those programs.

So that's definitely.

one of our driving markers around what we are looking for and when we're thinking about expansion.

I want to make that kind of like, you know.

No, excellent.

Thank you.