Saying goodbye to MI

Next week is LiLi’s last week at her Mandarin Immersion public elementary school in San Francisco. 

To continue Mandarin Immersion into middle school there are very few choices in San Francisco.  The public middle school that both Mandarin Immersion elementary schools feed into carries the Mandarin forward but at a huge cost:  electives.  SFUSD has decided that the kids will not have access to the traditional middle school electives since it is during that period the Mandarin will take place.  The school is also huge, over 1100 kids in three grades.  There’s one established private that has MI too, and at least one other smaller private newish on the scene.

Since the established MI private wasn’t for us, like many parents I had to decide between sending LiLi to the this large middle that carries forward the Mandarin but offers no electives or putting her in a smaller all-day-in-English school.  I chose the latter. 

I’ll supplement the Chinese, hire a caregiver who speaks only Chinese, and continue to spend summers in China.

We travel in three weeks.