East Lyme — In a letter sent to parents last week, Superintendent Jeffrey Newton announced that the district is considering expanding its elementary foreign language program.

The announcement came as Newton also said the current program would be paused at the start of the new school after the district’s only elementary Spanish teacher resigned to take a position in a different district.

Newton said Monday that while the program’s pause is likely temporary, he did not know when the district would hire a replacement teacher.

“It might start back up in November, January or the start of next school year. We don’t know the answer to that yet,” he said.

Because of summer vacation, Newton said the district would not be able to look for another teacher to immediately fill the position and the district is, instead, looking to possibly expand the program with more teachers and more sections throughout lower grades.

The fourth-grade language program was scheduled as a thirty-minute Spanish class held twice a week throughout each of the district’s 10 fourth-grade classrooms. It was taught only by the teacher that recently resigned, Newton said. He specified that the program was not a formalized curriculum, but rather an immersion program that taught the basic Spanish words and phrases, while also exposing children to a new culture. The elementary language program currently does not include French or other languages.

"An expanded program will provide more cultural experiences, more cultural awareness," Newton said. "I always think that's good for kids, and that's where our department will come in to see whether it's possible."

Newton said the district will soon mail parents surveys to gauge interest in an expanded program and will also speak with the global languages department to determine whether the idea is feasible, especially after the Board of Finance cut $250,000 from the education board’s requested $49.5 million budget for 2019-20.

“It all depends on what our budget looks like,” Newton said. “We want to make it a more robust program and drop it down into the lower grades — two, three and four. Let’s investigate this further, let’s see what we can to do make this a more robust program.”

As part of broader discussions considering where the district would need to make cuts after its requested budget was restricted in April, Newton and education board members spoke of possibly eliminating the language program in its entirety at its May 20 board meeting to help make up for cuts to its proposed 2019-2020 budget.

Some board members, though, expressed concern with the idea, stating that children are more apt to absorb a new language the younger they are, while other members said that instead of eliminating the program, a more expansive program should instead be prioritized.

“If you learn before the age of 10, you’ll be learning a world language in a totally different place that will make you much better at it and make you much better at learning other languages later on,” board member Barbara Senges said at that meeting defending the program. “Giving them a world language in fourth grade gives them access to a part of their brain that they wouldn’t have if they didn’t have it. To me, that makes it worth what we are paying for it.”

Board Chairman Tim Hagen warned that should the board remove the program, it would be “enormously” difficult to add it back in come next year.

“That’s why having these robust conversations around what the priorities are very important,” he said. “If you drop global languages, it would be so hard for us to pull it back.”

Speaking to the possibility of an expanded future program Monday, Newton said, “Running any program takes time out of the day, so if we are going to do it, we want to make it a good program and something that kids are invested in. We want to make sure it is quality and beneficial to kids. That’s what we want to identify and hopefully build.”

m.biekert@theday.com