Schools in the Canyons District that can't sign up 50 students for dual-language immersion by mid-January will lose a class under a policy the board approved Tuesday, Sept. 15, according to the meeting agenda. That includes schools serving Cottonwood Heights families, such as Ridgecrest Elementary and its Mandarin Chinese-English program.

Board member Katie Dahle moved to adopt the enrollment minimums, and board member Jackson Lewis seconded.

The vote was unanimous.

The new rule takes effect for the 2027-28 school year and applies each year after. Each school's Dual-Language Immersion (DLI) program needs at least 50 students committed to the target language and at least 19 in the non-immersion neighborhood class by Jan. 15 to keep a two-class cohort. If a school falls short, it drops to one class of 30 immersion students and 19 neighborhood students.

Schools that miss the January cutoff get one more chance. A March 15 deadline allows programs to restore a second class as students enter second grade. Any two-class cohort that shrinks to 30 students or fewer through attrition, at any grade level, drops to one class the following year.

The policy gives the district a framework for staffing decisions. In 2025-26, the district spent $1.43 million on 13 supplemental teaching positions to support DLI programs, according to records presented to the board.

Superintendent Dr. McKay Robinson presented the item as a third reading at the Sept. 15 meeting. The board first reviewed the proposal on Aug. 18, then deferred action on Sept. 1 to wait for results from a community survey that ran Aug. 21 through Sept. 4.

"The goal with these benchmarks is to be transparent and help families know what to expect well before the start of a new school year," Robinson said in an Aug. 20 district announcement when the proposal was first made public.

Traditionally, a two-class DLI cohort starts with about 56 immersion students, or 28 per class. But declining birth rates and the rising cost of living across Salt Lake County have shrunk the pipeline. One example presented to the board: a school with only 42 incoming kindergartners, too few to fill both an immersion track and a neighborhood classroom even if every family chose DLI.

Ridgecrest Elementary in Cottonwood Heights, which offers the Mandarin DLI program, is one of the Canyons schools whose enrollment will be measured against the new thresholds. Which schools currently run two-class cohorts is not specified in board records.

Long-term, the district is weighing boundary adjustments, DLI-only magnet schools and program consolidation. No decisions on those options have been made.

Families interested in DLI for the 2027-28 school year can apply during the district's window, which runs Sept. 30 through Dec. 15. The Jan. 15 enrollment count will determine whether each school keeps two classes or drops to one.