Given the popularity of dual language immersion programs in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School District, the school board is considering establishing a dual language elementary magnet school. But where? Chapel Hill-Carrboro has never had a magnet school, but rapid growth is occasioning a new elementary school in the district. Whenever a new school is built, the board examines its programs and its service and considers how to do a better job. But the magnet school proposal could involve moving hundreds of kids around and upsetting parents in the process. Who, exactly, would be displaced under this plan? Host Frank Stasio is joined by a panel of interested parties to discuss the history and efficacy of dual language programs and the future of those programs in Chapel Hill-Carrboro. He’s joined by Dave DeWitt, WUNC’s Education Reporter; Claudia Cervantes-Soon, an associate professor in the School of Education at The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; Makeba Wilbourn, an assistant professor at Duke University in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience; Omar Zinn, a parent of a child at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School in Chapel Hill; and David Saussy, a parent of a child at Glenwood Elementary School in Chapel Hill. Listener Call-in.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.