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With a new school year beginning in less than three weeks, some Montgomery County parents are decrying cuts to the public school system's language immersion programs in this year's budget.

In its $2.2 billion fiscal 2010 spending plan, which began July 1, the school system eliminated three part-time English instruction positions from the immersion programs at Maryvale, Rock Creek Forest and Sligo Creek elementary schools.

Students in language immersion programs learn the schools' entire curriculum in French, Spanish or Chinese. Teachers are supposed to refrain from speaking English in class.

In prior years, however, each school with a full immersion program would have a part-time instructor to help students comprehend oral and written English.

The part-time English instructors have been especially helpful, parents say, because the county's standardized tests are written in English. The students may know the answer to a test question, but don't know the English word for it, said Gabe Gonzalez, with three children in Sligo Creek Elementary School's French immersion program.

The instructors also helped ease the transition of elementary school immersion students to middle school immersion programs, which include more English language in lessons.

The parental outcry stems from the reduction in English teaching time for fifth-grade immersion students.

In a June 7 letter to the county school board, parent Michelle Russo expressed concern about the cuts, saying they would overburden the full-time teachers.

Next year at Sligo Creek, fifth-graders will receive 45 minutes a week of English instruction — half of what they got last year — while fourth-graders will continue to be given 90 minutes, according to school system information.

Some parents are concerned that the cuts to language immersion are foreshadowing the phasing out of the program entirely.

In the past two budget cycles, the school system has reduced the time that teachers spent translating the curriculum into the foreign language, parents and school administrators said.

One parent, Victoria Hall of Bethesda, with a child in a county language immersion program, said school board members and administrators need to do a better job of explaining the immersion cuts, which would go a "long way to quelling these rumors."

"Or, maybe there's truth to the rumors," she added.

The school system did not want to make cuts to the immersion program, but given the economic downturn, some across-the-board reductions were necessary, said Erick J. Lang, the system's associate superintendent for curriculum and instructional programs.

"This is not something we wanted to do, quite frankly," Lang said. "We felt that we could build in the rest of the instruction through existing resources."

In some cases, Lang said, coordinators present at each immersion school will go back into the classroom to teach.

The schools' cutbacks weren't limited to the immersion program, Lang noted. For instance, all high school literacy coach positions were eliminated, and instructional time for reading specialists in the county's smallest elementary schools was reduced, he said.

"We're doing our best trying not to impact the classroom," Lang said.

But the cuts — though minor — are another blow to the county's immersion programs, said Sara Melnick, a parent of three French language students at Sligo Creek.

"Even though it may seem minor, the repercussions could be larger than we know," she said. "The kids need to know how to read and write in English. Our language immersion programs have been chipped away for the past couple years. So our question is, ‘What's next?'"