Permits for FLAG Program Students

The Foreign Language Academy (FLAG) is a dual immersion program in which students have the opportunity to learn in Armenian, German, Italian, Korean, or Spanish. It is not a bilingual education program which gears students to transition into English. It is instead a unique program in which students learn in two languages. Instead of learning in one language and speaking another students learn, function, and develop in a bi-lingual environment. This program develops cognitive skills, increases creativity, and enhances brain activity. Studies have shown that test scores of children who learn in two languages are higher than their monolingual counterparts.

This unique program is NOT currently offered in LAUSD. There are no programs in LAUSD offering Armenian, Italian or German. There are 3 schools offering Korean Dual Immersion program in LAUSD and only 4 schools who offer Spanish Dual Immersion but they do not use the same model as FLAG. Glendale Unified also will have both a middle school and high school FLAG program which the elementary schools will feed into. The parents who send their children to this school come from multi-ethnic and multi-cultural communities with varying socio-economic backgrounds. We do not enroll our children in this program to try to escape the schools in our communities but rather to provide a unique opportunity to our child that does not exist at this time.

We are asking that the FLAG program offered by Glendale Unified be recognized as unique opportunity for students and that all students currently attending and students enrolled for next year K-6 receive an automatic permit from LAUSD to attend the elementary schools where this program exists (Thomas Edison Elementary, Franklin Elementary, Keppel Elementary, and Jefferson Elementary).