The Brooklyn-Queens Bilingual Group held an informational panel for parents and community members interested in starting a French-English Dual Language Program in East Brooklyn this past weekend.

The potential program could serve students in East Flatbush, Ditmas, Lefferts Gardens, Canarsie, Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Many Francophones live in these neighborhoods, but French programs in the public schools there are sparse.

Keynote speaker Isabelle Barrière, a professor at Brooklyn College and Yeled V’Yalda Research Institute, emphasized the need for such programs considering French is the sixth most common language spoken in New York, and 22,000 children in the city speak French at home daily.

“There is the issue of heritage language learners, when the language you are learning is in the context of minority,” Barrière said.

This is the case for many of New York’s French speakers who hail from francophone countries in West Africa and the Caribbean. Without formal education, Barrière said, there is a good chance that these students will lose their French skills.

Moreen Tonny, founder of the Brooklyn-Queens Bilingual Group, stressed the need for increased communication with recent immigrants who might want these programs in East Brooklyn.

“The only challenge we’ve got is getting the word out to them,” Tonny said. ‘When we talk to them, they want their kids to have access to this program. But they don’t know where to go and find the information.”

Programs like the French Heritage Language Program (FHLP) do reach out to those communities by providing free school day and after-school programming to French-speaking students in public schools and community centers across the City. Program Coordinator Benoît Le Dévedec emphasized the need for more formal education in French from a young age, so that the work of the FHLP would better complement and reinforce what students have already learned in school.

“I think that we are planting very good seeds here,” Le Dévédec said. “There are many ways for students to value their French at school today; they can even get college credits for it. Taking French, or continuing education in French, can be an asset not only for the students, but for the schools themselves. This makes French more sustainable in the long run.”

Principal Lena Barbera at P.S. 20 in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, also stressed the benefits schools can reap from offering dual-language programs. P.S. 20 began its inaugural French-English program this fall, welcoming its first class of kindergarteners.

“I think this is just what our school needs to set us apart and make us unique, in an area where everyone is competing,” Barbera said. “Schools are like businesses now. We need to sell our programs, and this is a great service to the community.”

Barbera highlighted the impact parents can have on the creation of programs, a sentiment echoed by parent and Founder of La Petite École preschool, Virgil de Voldere.

“It’s very hands-on; it’s very grassroots,” De Voldere said. “There is really a buddy system, and everyone can work together.”