The Penn-Trafford School Board and Administration have made the difficult decision to phase out French classes district-wide over a 4 year period. A long-time high school French teacher is retiring at the end of this school year. Enrollment in all Foreign Language classes has seen a considerable drop. In the 2022-2023 school year, we have 9 classes with an enrollment of five or fewer students. There are currently 84 students enrolled in 5 levels of French in grades 8-12 (only 5% of the student population of those grades). The Penn-Trafford School District believes French is very important and wants to provide students with as many opportunities as possible, but it is hard to justify and sustain additional languages to Spanish when you look at the numbers in these four classes (French/German/Russian/Exploratory Language).
The phase-out will occur gradually. Students enrolled in French 1, 2, 3, and 4 during the 2022-2023 school year will be able to continue with the French program until they graduate.