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Two language classes will not be offered next year due tobudget cuts and student under- enrollment. Startingnext semester, German 1 and Advanced Placement Italian will be suspended,according to world language department head Dorothy Ong. Additionally, a numberof the department’s annual activities have also been called off this year. Thisincludes the annual Korean class fundraisers.
The end of AP Italian is due to aCollege Board decision to cancel AP Italian exams on a national level.According to AP Central (www.apcentral.collegeboard.com), the cause of the course’s cancellation was due tolack of funding needed convert the test to an Internet model intended toeventually offer the exam at a lower cost.Of the $9.5 million ten-year cost set by the College Board,$4.5 million was due in the ’08- ’09 school year. However, faced with thechallenge of the current economic situation, external funders were unable tomeet that requirement despite efforts by the Italian Language Foundation.However, College Board will consider renewing the exam if future fundraisingled by the Italian Language Foundation is successful, according to the CollegeBoard announcement. As of now, the AP Italian classes willbe converted to seventh and eighth semester honors courses starting nextsemester, Italian teacher Judy Branzburg said. Whilemost other languages classes — except Latin, Korean, German and Hebrew languageclasses — offer advanced placement courses, removing the AP Italian class maybecome a factor for freshmen selecting their language. “However, I am certainlyhoping this won’t affect the number of Italian 1 enrollments,” Branzburg said. Some students feellenient towards the College Board decision. “At first I was a littledisappointed, but I was relieved that I would have one less AP to take careof,” current Italian 6H student junior Amber Murakami-Fester said. Nextsemester, German 1 will also be canceled because there are too few requests,according to German and Korean language teacher Ah Mi Cho. This year, only 16students listed German 1 on their course request sheets, falling short of theapproximated 25-student minimum, according to Cho. Currently, there is only oneGerman language class, a third-year class with 19 students. Five of these areseniors, which would leave only 14 students continuing next year. According toCho, she had offered to combine first-year and fourth-year classes, but theadministration decided to cancel the class. Accordingto junior German 6 student Kelvin Fok, a portion of the prospective Germanstudents chose Spanish instead. “I think it is really terrible because theGerman course has been around for more than 17 years,” Fok said. CurrentGerman 6 student junior Nicholas Kwan agreed that German is really unique toLowell. “We are the only public school that offers German,” Kwan said. “Takingit away is like taking away a huge part of Lowell.” However,German and Korean teacher Ah Mi Cho said that German would be offered againwhen requests increase. Affectedalso by the cost of organizing events, many of the Korean language class’annual fundraisers and activities will be cancelled, including the speechcontest, funded by the Korean consulate, and the annual fundraising dinner,according to Cho. Thisyear’s financial downturn is the main reason the activities have been canceled,according to Cho.“We decided notto do anything because of the cost of coordinating all the activities,” Chosaid. “Also, many sponsors have dropped out this year, including Starbucks,which had provided us with raffle ticket prizes.” However, the tradition ofholding an end-of-the-year picnic will be carried on, welcoming the new Koreanlanguage students. |
