Official Languages committee  I will answer your question, and then I'll pass this on to my colleague, Marie Commance-Shulko, who is the French immersion consultant and works very closely with our schools. We work very closely with our planning department, because they do work with the communities, to find

Official Languages committee  No? That's fine. Thank you.

Official Languages committee  I absolutely believe it has made an incredible difference for our students to see that French not only exists within the classroom, but also exists outside of the classroom. We think it's important to attend outings within our community and to be part of national outings. I ment

Official Languages committee  I believe it is an area in which the federal government could provide some support and that absolutely would benefit all students in Canada. I'm thinking especially of students who come from lower socio-economic homes, where they're not able to afford outings such as this. I'm

Official Languages committee  When we began our renewal project we did have an area where we were looking at marketing. What we tend to do is meet with our French immersion principals two or three times a year and discuss what kinds of marketing tools we want to look at to use. Areas that we have done in th

Official Languages committee  Actually, there is a correction to that. It is 41% of our students who are enrolled in French programs, so that does include our core French as well.

Official Languages committee  At this time it's only 8%, which is a number of 3,500 or a bit over. Coming from, I believe we were at something like 1,200, to be now at 3,500 is quite a coup for our district.

Official Languages committee  In our district we have 85,000 students.

Official Languages committee  We struggle just like other districts. We struggle the same as they do. We are, however, very fortunate to have a French university right here in Edmonton, Campus Saint-Jean. Many of their graduates come to us. We also have teachers coming from our main university. We work very

Official Languages committee  Yes, absolutely. I'm very excited to speak to the Alberta French Language Education Consortium, which was part of our French language renewal that was implemented in 2004. All the other school districts within the province were invited into the consortium, as well as organizatio

Official Languages committee  I can speak more so for the success within our own school boards. As I had mentioned, in 2001 the Commissioner of Official Languages, an MLA, and our superintendent of schools met to discuss the decline in numbers within our school district in French immersion to the point where

Official Languages committee  Thank you, Chair, and honourable members. I am pleased to speak on behalf of Edmonton Public Schools regarding this committee's study of official languages immersion schools. During this time, I will share information about the context of French immersion within our school di