Bickel Elementary to be a magnet school

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — Starting this Fall, Bickel Elementary will be a magnet school for dual language, making it the first in the Twin Falls School District. This news comes after there was a decrease in enrollment district-wide, which resulted in Bickel possibly being closed down.

“The whole idea of a dual emergent school is that you have half of the students that speak one native language and half of the other students will speak another, and so for our dual emergent we’ve selected English and Spanish,” says Superintendent Brady Dickinson.

According to Dickinson, Bickel converting into a magnet school will help keep its doors open. This change will allow more freedom for students to attend.

” What makes it a difference is the fact that it doesn’t have traditional attendance, zones or boundaries, so people from all over the community can attend the school,” says Dickinson. “Whereas general speaking schools or neighborhood schools really only serve the neighborhoods that directly surround it.”

Despite fewer boundaries, there still could possibly be some in place, now that Bickel will be school choice in the Fall.

“They may have limited spots available,” says Idaho Department of Education’s Parent Engagement and School Choice Coordinator, Rachel Burks. “Let’s say they have more interest than they have spots available, so there may be an application process or a lottery in place to meet that need.”

The Idaho Department of Education reported that the state has around 20 magnet schools in total. They also say magnet schools provide innovative educational options for families in the area.

“These students are going to not only be able to be educated in the traditional content, but they’re going to be exposed to another language along the way, however they choose to approach that, and it’s a unique opportunity that other students in the traditional school setting may not have,” says Burks.

In the case of Bickel, the goal of the new program is for students to become biliterate in two languages. But the other side of this good news is that the district will have to collapse the school zone that feeds into Bickel right now.

“We’re going to have to look at the attendant zone and assign those students to the other schools that are in that area, and so right now it looks like most of the students will be assigned to morning side Oregon or Lincoln Trail,” says Dickinson.

The district is asking for the community’s input as they redraw the zone map. There will be a meeting held at Bickel on Tuesday, February 25th at 6 p.m. To share your feedback, click here: https://forms.gle/8dWNbyHJnwBtxnGr6

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