Two Canyons School District teacher specialists want Sandy-area parents to know that raising a bilingual child won't split that child's ability to read.

Amy Gutierrez and Lesli Morris, both teacher specialists in the district, made the case on Episode 137 of the Connect Canyons podcast, released Tuesday, Sept. 1, for World Literacy Day. Their message: skills children build in one language transfer to another.

Vocabulary, comprehension and the ability to retell and analyze a story are not locked to English, Morris said on the episode. Children can develop those abilities in a home language and draw on them as they pick up a second one.

"Honoring a student's language is honoring them," Morris said. "The language that you speak is so integral to your communication, which is so integral to who you are."

Gutierrez grew up in a Spanish-speaking household and learned English alongside Spanish. She said the literacy skills she built in one language transferred easily to the other. Now her son, who speaks some Spanish, is enrolled in Midvalley Elementary's Spanish immersion program. She said he has been above benchmark in math and English Language Arts since joining.

Both specialists urged parents whose native language is not English to keep speaking, reading and telling stories in that language at home. Dropping a home language in favor of English can hurt a child's development in both languages, they said.

The podcast lands as the district's Dual-Language Immersion (DLI) program faces an enrollment crossroads. At the Sept. 1 board meeting, Superintendent McKay Robinson presented a proposed enrollment rubric for DLI schools. Under the proposal, schools where fewer than 50 students commit by a Jan. 15 deadline would shift from two classroom cohorts to one cohort of 30.

A two-class DLI cohort typically starts with about 56 immersion students across two classrooms.

Three district schools would already fall to one cohort under the proposal based on the latest 11-day enrollment count, according to the board meeting summary. The district has not named which schools.

The DLI survey, released Aug. 2, asks three questions aimed at gauging family sentiment about the proposed rubric. The board urged all Canyons families to respond by Friday, Sept. 4. School Community Councils have also been asked to discuss the proposal and provide feedback.

The DLI enrollment window is set to run Sept. 30 through Dec. 15, with real-time numbers posted on the district website.