“It was not an easy decision”: Connaught moving to full French immersion

Some parents of students in the English-track program are worried about what this could mean for their kids.

“Most of my friends are really nice to me and if I’m feeling sad then they’ll help me out,” said Ella Benson, a grade four student at the school. “They’re just always there for me.”

Benson, nine, said she has made a lot of good friends at Connaught School.

She has been in the English-track program since kindergarten and is close enough that she can walk to and from school every day.

But because of the board’s decision, she won’t be able to attend the school by the time she gets to grade six.

“The French immersion enrolment has grown at roughly seven times the rate of our enrolment growth system-wide,” said superintendent Mark Davidson.

Benson’s mother, Carrie Haley, said she’s frustrated by the decision.

“Part of the reason to move into the neighbourhood was we have a young child and we wanted to be able to come to a walking school, a community school,” she said.

Haley said the immersion program wasn’t a good fit for their family. Neither she or Benson’s dad speak the language.

“Neither one of us speak French so there’s going to come to a point where we get to a level where we can’t help with homework,” she said.

Lyndsey Alston has three of her kids already in the immersion program.

“My husband and I, we both speak another language so we saw the value in teaching our children young,” she said. “We both learned as adults how to speak another language and it was hard.”

More than 500 students attend Connaught School and roughly 400 are in the French program.

Davidson said 180 English-track students will be split throughout the community. The majority will go to Herald School. Others will attend Crestwood and River Heights.

“There was no easy option for the board,” Davidson said. “You knew that you had a school that was too crowded to continue to accommodate the growth that existed and so they had to grapple with many decisions that weren’t perfect in order to try and make sure that we take good care of kids.”

Haley doesn’t like the options she’s left with.

“We’re going to lose the ability for our child to walk to school which has been a huge confidence builder, like, ‘look, I can do this on my own now’, a little bit of independence. We’re definitely going to lose that ability,” she said.

But Benson said she has friends in the English and French programs and she’s going to miss them all.

“It’s kinda scary to think that maybe I’ll never see my best friends again, or any of my friends at all,” she said.

The division will be holding an information session next month for parents who still have questions about the move.

by Ashley Wiebe

“It was not an easy decision”: Connaught moving to full French immersion

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