Foreign language program expanded

OGDEN — The DaVinci Academy of Science and the Arts has received a $50,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to teach foreign languages, such as Arabic, Russian and Farsi, deemed critical to national security and commerce.

The grant comes to the Ogden charter school as part of President Bush's National Security Language Initiative, which supports creating or expanding programs in public schools.

Fewer than 1 percent of American high school students study Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Japanese, Korean, Russian or Urdu, the State Department reports.

In Utah, more than 71,000 students — 31 percent of seventh- through 12th-graders — were enrolled in some kind of foreign language course in the 2005-06 school year, state education data show. Just under two-thirds took Spanish, about 15 percent took French and 10 percent German.

"This is not just an education issue; it's an economic issue, a civic issue, a social issue, a national security issue, and it's everybody's issue," U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said in a prepared statement.