Parents, families, and community allies formally request that the CHCCS School Board and District honor their promises to Glenwood Elementary families to preserve and expand its STEAM2 Program
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Chapel Hill and Carrboro City School District (CHCCS) – August 26, 2026
On June 4, 2026, the CHCCS Board of Education voted to close Glenwood Elementary School. Prior to the vote, Glenwood families expressed concern about the complexity of closing the only school that houses the District’s STEAM2 Magnet Program. Elementary students across the district join the program through a lottery. Once selected, they receive specialized instruction in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) and Mandarin language. For Mandarin language learning, they can opt to either spend half a day learning in Mandarin (the Dual Language Pathway) or 90 minutes a week learning Mandarin (the World Language Pathway). All students are immersed in Chinese culture learning.
During the CHCCS Board meetings in 2026, Board members and the District Superintendent reassured Glenwood families that they were only closing buildings, would preserve school programs, and would maintain both pathways, ensuring that they would provide what was needed. They also justified splitting the pathways by stating it would allow the District to expand Mandarin language learning by bringing it to more than one school. Finally, they made commitments to strengthening the Mandarin language pathway from elementary school to middle school and high school.
However, at the August 20, 2026 Board Meeting, the Board voted to split the STEAM2 program and to move the Dual Language pathway to Rashkis Elementary School. Some Board members then expressed their interest in removing the magnet status and Mandarin language instruction from the World Language pathway. This suggestion was shocking to many, given that the Board had just made a major decision about the future of Mandarin language instruction and then professed not to understand how the World Language pathway worked when the Board made its prior promises.
Other Board members expressed their concerns with breaking publicly-made promises to the Glenwood community. We sincerely appreciate their commitment to serving with integrity. These Board members recognized that Glenwood has had to bear the brunt of the harm caused by a school closure and that not understanding a program that a Board oversees, before voting to split it in half, is not a valid reason to backtrack on a promise.
Trust cannot be built on broken promises. As the district moves forward with comprehensive redistricting, staff and families need to be able to trust CHCCS’s commitment in this high-stakes process. If promises to the Glenwood community are not kept, it signals to everyone in the District and beyond that the decisions of the Board and District cannot be trusted.
We therefore ask that the CHCCS Board of Education uphold its promises to preserve and expand the STEAM2 program, keeping both pathways as a magnet and maintaining their STEAM component. Our families and staff look forward to collaborating with the District, Board, and local, statewide, and national experts in bilingual language education who have submitted public comments of commitment to do so.
Submitted by: The Glenwood Elementary PTA