Multi-language elementary school proposed by Toronto Catholic board

Guten Morgen, niños; ouvrez les livres — and qing zuo xia.*
Forget French immersion; children as young as four could be taught in up to four languages — every day — at an unusual multi-language specialty school being proposed by the Toronto Catholic District School Board.
Far from being a confusing Tower of Babel, its champions argue that a possible French-Spanish-German-Mandarin-immersion program being considered for north Scarborough as early as this fall — a first in Ontario, if not Canada — would offer a gateway to the languages of the world’s economic superpowers at an age when kids are best able to master them.
“My view is we’re not preparing our students for the world stage — we barely do a passing job with French, and we’re a bilingual country! — so we’re asking parents if they’d like to educate their children in languages of some of the largest economies in the world,” said Michael Del Grande, chair of the TCDSB.
“Maybe we would teach math in German, and geography in French, and health in Mandarin… I’m trying to trailblaze! We’re too isolated here in Canada.”
Del Grande has proposed what he calls a European-style multi-language program to be housed in the former St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic School near Warden Ave. and Finch Ave. E., which closed in 2011. If enough parents of pre-schoolers across Toronto indicate they would enroll their child this fall or September 2016, the board would launch it as a kindergarten program and grow it one grade at a time. The school has room for 259 students.