The New York City district will add dual-language programs at 40 schools next fall, boosting the number of programs by close to 10 percent.
The initiative will include instruction in Mandarin, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Japanese, or Spanish, depending on the school site.
In dual-language programs, lessons are taught in English and a second language, with the goal of students’ fluency in both. City schools already offer about 480 bilingual programs. One in seven students in the 1.1 million-student district is an English-language learner.
Federal Title III language-instruction money will cover the cost of the programs.