According to sophomore Yoni Potter, the cancellation of the IB Hebrew program may not have an impact on current Park students, but will impact incoming grades as the program may be discontinued.

“It won’t affect me because it won’t be cancelled until 2022,” Potter said. “But, it will affect younger people going to St. Louis Park later on, especially because they won’t be able to take Hebrew and do the IB diploma.”

Principal Scott Myers said the reason the IB Hebrew Program is at risk is there were not enough students for the program to continue. The official word will be determined by January of 2019 and testing will continue until May 2022.

“On a worldwide level, their enrollment numbers were at a level that they consider at risk. Therefore, they have to make a determination by January 2019 on whether they’ll continue the program,” Myers said. “Students will still be testing up until the school year ending in 2022.”

Myers said the school has not begun taking action yet, as they wanted to hear what the community had to say about the potential cancellation of IB Hebrew.

“We haven’t taken any specific action yet because we just got the notification,” Myers said.

“The most important thing we wanted to do was bring some people in the community together to find out the impact.”

Lauren Weiser, a parent of an 

IB Hebrew student, said she believes the program is worthwhile for the school to try to keep. Weiser said she thinks it would be beneficial to enlarge the class size.

“I hope (the Hebrew program) continues to grow, because I think it is a really great program. Maybe they could hire other teachers, so it’s not just one teacher. I think if more students participated in it, that would be great.”

Weiser said her family lives outside of the St. Louis Park district and chose St. Louis Park because of the IB Hebrew program. She will now reevaluate schools for her next child, as the impact of the cancellation could change her decision.

“Well we’re here out of district, we specifically picked this school because of the Hebrew program and the IB program, so it definitely is a stressful situation because we have another child, so do we stay with St. Louis Park, or do we pick our home school. It definitely affects not just my decision, but a lot of parents decisions of if we continue at St. Louis Park.”

Myers said he understands the community has concern for the IB Hebrew program being in jeopardy, and hopes that something can be done about it, especially to sway families towards staying at St. Louis Park if the cancellation is a deal breaker.

“I definitely heard from the meeting tonight that there’s high interest, and I know that it’s something that has been a great part of our school’s tradition. So I’m hopeful that we can find some solutions here,” Myers said. “I also recognize that without an IB program, there are families that may choose not to attend here. I respect people’s choices, but we’re going to have the conversations we can to see if we can influence the decision.”