We, the undersigned parents and community members, expect Frederick County Public Schools to provide Spanish Immersion from pre-kindergarten through the twelfth grade among the choices offered to families beginning in the 2015 - 2016 school year. The choices we seek include proven immersion models for children whose first language is English, Spanish or another language; these include: 

- Full and partial immersion models where the approved FCPS curriculum is taught in Spanish for all or half of the school day;

- English-Spanish dual language/two-way immersion models with roughly equal groups of native English and Spanish speaking groups of students; and

- International school models that incorporate Spanish Immersion into the curriculum.

Language immersion schools are highly valued and proven to be successful in other communities. Frederick County Public Schools offers one Spanish enrichment/ dual-language Spanish instructionprogram for Prekindergarten (3 years old) through the fifth grade at Carroll Creek Montessori Public Charter School (CCMPCS). CCMPCS is a public charter school offering a Spanish language immersion program and a Spanish language enrichment program, in addition to a Montessori education, for a scarce number of students.  Only limited spaces were available in the recent CCMPCS lottery for school year 2014-2015. Students in the lottery were placed in the extensive wait list.

We believe Spanish Immersion schools will bring significant academic, cross-cultural and economic benefits to Frederick County, especially considering the increasing population of Spanish speakers in our community, region and country.

Our vision is a Frederick County that nurtures early development of bilingual or multilingual children who excel academically across subjects, interact effectively with people from different cultures, and compete successfully in the global marketplace. Spanish Immersion choices offered by Frederick County Public Schools are long overdue and critical to realizing this vision.