The English Montreal School Board has a new video campaign designed to promote its French face.
In an aggressive marketing strategy targeted at the parents of any child eligible to attend English school, the board has developed new French-only videos and advertisements to fight dwindling enrolment.
The board is losing about 900 students per year to French and private schools, because a growing number of English-speaking families are choosing to send their children to French school, believing they'll learn better quality French.
It's a myth the EMSB hopes to dispel, said school board chairperson Angela Mancini.
"The students that we're seeing graduate are bilingual and bi-literate. They're doing wonderfully; they're going to French universities," said Mancini.
Parents seem pleased with the French immersion program within the English schools.
"They do get adequate French. If they weren't, I wouldn't place them here. I'm pro-languages. I speak four and I want my children to at least speak two," said mother Patricia Willis.
Willis is also concerned about the long-term consequences of giving up the English board and therefore the right to attend English school.
"We have to think about the eligibility. If I don't give this to my kids, their kids won't have that," she said.
With a strong French immersion program, the EMSB aims to foster not only education, but a sense of community within children, many of whom are raised in bilingual families.
"We speak English, but with my dad's side of the family we speak French, because my dad grew up in French," said EMSB student William Griess, reflecting a common Montreal reality.
