New bilingual, bi-cultural Austin school set to open

By Amy Johnson – KVUE News

Austin, TX - February 15, 2009 - A new school in Austin is set to open in August. It will be the first of its kind, with a dual English/Spanish immersion program, the educational standards of the International Baccalaureate Primary Years program, and a multi-cultural focus.

Deborah Palmer, Ph.D., didn’t learn to speak Spanish until college. But now, as an assistant professor of Bilingual and Bi-Cultural Education at the University of Texas, she wants her children to have opportunities she didn’t. Which is why she and her husband have decided that both their children will attend Austin’s Magellan International School, which opens in August.

"Right now, we have (our daughter) in a public bilingual kindergarten, but it's dissatisfying because the goal of the kindergarten is to get the Spanish speaking students to speak English," she said. "It's not to help English speaking children learn Spanish. She loves her teacher and she's happy there, but she's not going to come out as a fluent bilingual."

The Magellan school’s director, Maria Isabel Leon, is now the principal at a bilingual school in Bogota, Columbia.

"I helped the school grow from like 600 to 900 students. We have now a full pre-K to 12 program," she said.

The Magellan school will use the International Baccalaureate Program for the primary years. Classes will be small, with 80% of the lessons in Spanish at first, then 50/50 by third or fourth grade. Students will also learn Mandarin.

"To be able to compete for one thing obviously in this global economy and global world, but also this whole idea of being sensitive to others is very important,” said Leon. “So it's a very unique combination what we're offering, I think. And I think the city is poised for it and ready for it.”

That’s also what attracted Sandra de Leon to the school.

"It was really important for me, not growing up speaking the language and kind of missing a part of that and really wanting to have that for my own daughter... kind of going back to the roots," she said.

The school will begin with Pre-K through second grade and continue to grow each year. However, children who don’t speak Spanish will likely not be able to attend after second grade because of language issues.

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