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Families learned Monday that Glenwood Elementary School’s Mandarin world language magnet program could end in June.
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Chapel Hill-Carrboro Superintendent Rodney Trice sent out an email telling district families he will recommend the school board disband Glenwood’s Mandarin world language track and move the students now enrolled in it to their neighborhood schools next school year.
The school board voted 5-2 on Aug. 20 to move Glenwood’s separate Mandarin dual-language track to Rashkis Elementary School. The board delayed a decision about putting the school’s world language track at Mary Scroggs Elementary School until September.
Students in the world language track receive 90 minutes of Mandarin language instruction each week. The dual-language track is an immersion program. Glenwood students also participate in a specialized STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) curriculum.
In Monday’s message, Trice thanked students, families and staff for their participation in conversations about the future of Glenwood’s Mandarin language and STEAM programs.
“I am deeply appreciative of the time you have spent meeting with the administration, engaging with the Board of Education, asking difficult questions, sharing concerns, and advocating for your school communities and for the children you care so deeply about,” Trice said.
“I also recognize how difficult and emotional this process has been,” he added, citing “the loss of a school community that means a great deal to many people” and questions about school culture and community, student assignment, scheduling and instructional practices.
“Those concerns are real, and I have tried to listen carefully to them,” Trice said.
The school board will decide whether to accept Trice’s recommendation during its meeting Thursday at Lincoln Center on Merritt Mill Road.
Trice will also recommend that the district take a wider look at what makes future elementary-level magnet language programs “educationally distinctive,” what students should learn, staffing and schedules, how it affects student assignment, and “how it fits within a broader district strategy.”
Glenwood PTA President Rachel Rossi, who alerted parents to the superintendent’s pending recommendation earlier Monday, urged them to show up Thursday, “so we can show the District and Board how unhappy we are to have false promises made to us and then broken.”
Glenwood parents have asked Trice multiple times to meet with them and discuss keeping the world language students together, Rossi said in her email
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The board will also get an update from staff about the ongoing elementary school redistricting plan, which will also be implemented in the 2027-28 school year.
While the district has historically allowed students enrolled in a specialized program to complete it, Trice said, the significant drop in the district’s overall enrollment and the redistricting process that started this summer has created circumstances that “are unusual.”
Continuing the world language track as a magnet program at Scroggs or phasing out the program at Scroggs as the current students leave elementary school would reduce the district’s flexibility to adjust school boundaries, he said. It could also force the district to reassign more students to Scroggs over time as the Mandarin students age out, leaving vacant seats to fill, he said.
“Given where we are today, I believe the most responsible recommendation is to preserve as much flexibility as possible as we enter the larger redistricting process,” Trice said.
Glenwood parents argued that preserving the Mandarin world language track would continue a close-knit school culture and further the program and district’s growing reputation. Two national Asian American advocacy groups have also joined the call.
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, a national nonprofit organization that advocates and fights for the civil rights of Asian Americans, expressed concerns in a letter about the board’s process for determining Glenwood’s future.
The board did not analyze the inconvenience or hardship to affected students, the group said, and, without redistricting, the board lacked an accurate number of students who could be affected.
“This omission reflects a broader pattern, not just a deficiency in the reports,” said Jane Shim, director of the organization’s Anti-Asian Violence Program.
“Parents and students have testified that [Glenwood’s program] provides an important cultural space for Asian American families in the district. Yet at several meetings, board members suggested there was not enough room to prioritize these families’ needs,” Shim said. “Framing this decision as zero-sum pits Asian American families against other communities for fixed resources and risks casting them as the source of the district’s constraints.”
The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance also sent a letter, noting the district’s promises that the “programs would be preserved” were followed by moves to dissolve the STEAM and Mandarin programs.
“We have followed the debate and have been disappointed by the apparent indifference displayed by the board to the heightened sensitivities of the Chinese American community in your district,” APALA President Mikayla Vu said in the letter.
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