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Hernando Today

Students: No Language Teacher, No Scholarships

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By LINNEA BROWN

Hernando Today

Published: June 27, 2008

BROOKSVILLE - Former Hernando High School senior Nadia Estrada loved taking German class at school.

Since her mother is Spanish, she wanted to learn a language that seemed more unique, and her stepfather - who spent 10 years living in Germany - volunteered to help her with her homework.

She excelled in German I during her 11th grade year, and looked forward to completing German II her senior year as one of the qualifying requirements for a Florida Bright Futures scholarship.

But the class was discontinued, a factor that Estrada and other former students say caused them to lose their shot at the scholarship.

"They ruined my chances of getting a Bright Futures scholarship," said Timothy Ball, who graduated with Estrada this month.

However, district officials insist that other factors - not the school's lack of a German II class - determined the students' scholarship opportunities.

"The (lack of) German class did not stop any one from qualifying for Bright Futures," said the school's outgoing principal, Betty Harper.

In order to qualify for the scholarship, which pays for 75 to 100 percent of tuition costs to any state university or community college within Florida, students must have taken two consecutive years of the same foreign language, as well as earning a 3.0 grade point average and completing other academic requirements.

Since the school did not hire another German teacher during the 2007-08 school year, all students who were juniors during their first year of German class could not qualify for the language portion of the scholarship.

But school officials say they examined each student's records and determined that no student was at risk of losing the scholarship due to the lack of a German II class. Students either already had two years of a different foreign language, such as Spanish, or already would have been disqualified from the scholarship due to other academic requirements that had not been met.

"There's no way we would deny a student a scholarship. It's based on Bright Futures criteria," executive director of support services Sonya Jackson said. The class was discontinued for two reasons: The number of students taking German had diminished in recent years, and the district couldn't find another teacher, officials said.

"It wasn't that they didn't find one," Jackson said. "They found someone, but they (declined the position) because they would have had to take a pay cut."

Harper said that in order to employ a full-time German teacher, the school would have needed more than the 70 students who expressed interest in taking the class.

By the time the 2007-08 school year began, only seven students expressed interest in continuing with German II, and the school tried many different avenues to find a part-time German teacher, Harper said.

They included a collaborative, "long distance" learning experiment utilizing TVs and the German class at Springstead High School, as well as attempting to recruit from Pasco Hernando Community College.

When the class was eventually dropped, Estrada's mother, Maria Veal of Brooksville, said she tried other avenues to find a way for her daughter to take a second year of German.

However, taking the class at PHCC would have cost money, she said.

"I would have had to pay out of pocket for German classes for my daughter to get a scholarship," Veal said. "I went back and forth with (officials), and said, 'This is not right.'"

School officials say they informed students of other free options, which included taking German online through the Florida Virtual School or obtaining a voucher to attend German II class at Springstead or Central High.

But students told a different story. They said they were not told of other options, and that they lost the motivation to obtain the other necessary academic requirements with the discontinuing of the class.

Either way, Ball said German was his favorite class and that he would have liked to continue learning it.

"I think they should bring it back," he said. "It's one of the easier foreign languages to learn, and there seemed to be a lot of kids who were interested in it."

Reporter Linnea Brown can be reached at 352-544-5289 or lbrown@hernandotoday.com.

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