Public education is at the intersection of individual growth and collective responsibility. Schools exist to help students become their best selves while also preparing them to contribute to the economic and social life of their communities.
That balance is not always comfortable. Serving one goal can feel like sacrificing the other.
New Kensington-Arnold School District is experiencing that tension. District officials are weighing whether limited resources are better spent preserving a shrinking high school French program or expanding in-person English language instruction for a growing number of students who cannot yet access the classroom in English.
It isn’t that French lacks value. It has a certain je ne sais quoi — something difficult to measure but easy to appreciate. But does the potential benefit of graduating Western Pennsylvania students who can speak French serve taxpayers as directly as graduating students who can speak and understand English?
That question is at the heart of the district’s proposal to phase out its high school French program while expanding in-house English language instruction. The district’s English learner population has more than doubled in two years, with students arriving at the high school level with little or no exposure to spoken or written English. At the same time, enrollment in upper-level French courses has dropped into the single digits.
This is also why school boards exist. Education is not one-size-fits-all, and districts must be able to respond to the students who are actually sitting in their classrooms — not a generic model handed down from Harrisburg or Washington. Local leaders are best positioned to weigh educational value against immediate need.
Ending a district-run French program does not have to mean ending French instruction altogether. The change would not eliminate foreign language opportunities for students, which can remain important for college admission. Options such as online coursework and dual enrollment could still allow interested students to meet prerequisite requirements while the district focuses its in-person resources on English language instruction.
Foreign language study can be flexible. Foundational English instruction cannot. For students learning to navigate an English-speaking classroom for the first time, daily, in-person immersion is not enrichment — it is access. That is a responsibility public schools cannot outsource indefinitely.
As much as a school must weigh the best interests of its students and their highest aspirations, it must also consider immediate needs. Schools serve communities as well as individuals. A program that makes sense in one place — even one that produces highly skilled graduates — might offer little value if it does not meet the needs of students or align with the demands of local business and industry. Geography, demographics and economic realities matter.
Public education is not about preserving programs for their own sake. It is about meeting students where they are and giving them the tools they need to succeed — as individuals and as members of the broader community. In New Kensington-Arnold, that means recognizing that students who cannot yet read, write or understand English cannot fully access any curriculum, no matter how rich.
School boards exist to make those calls, based on the realities in their classrooms, not abstract ideals or distant mandates. Choosing access over tradition is not a loss of values — it is an affirmation of public education’s most basic responsibility.
