Parents can register online rather than in line this year for kindergarten French immersion classes in School District 43.

For the first time, the registration process will be available electronically for the popular program.

Assistant superintendent Sylvia Russell hopes parents will find this approach easier than lining up outside schools.

"For the last few years, we've had fairly big lineups of parents staying up late and coming in the middle of the night to get a French immersion spot at a couple of our schools," Russell said.

"We thought we would use electronic registration this year for French immersion so people don't have to line up overnight. So there's a process that's set up in the district now for people who are interested in kindergarten French immersion to go online and register their children that way rather than this lineup approach."

Online kindergarten French immersion registration runs from 9 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 19 to 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 25.

This registration process is specifically for kindergarten students - not for kids who are already in French immersion in higher grades.

"Those kids are already accepted into their schools, so there's no problem there, and there's generally space to move around," Russell said.

"It's kindergarten where we

have some hotspots at a few of our schools in terms of being able to fit everybody in that wants to go there."

French immersion programs tend to fill up quickly at Panorama, Glen and Glenayre elementaries. Some years, Porter and Rochester elementaries are also full to capacity.

"Parents are pretty interested in programs of choice at this particular time," Russell said. "So I'm expecting that parents need to probably pay a fair bit of attention to getting their applications in early for all programs of choice, but particularly for French immersion."

French immersion registrations will be processed on a first-come, first-served basis. Parents will be told by Feb. 3 whether their children made it into the program or not. For those who don't make the cut, they will still have time to apply for regular kindergarten classes during the registration period from Feb. 7 to 9.

Registration for other specialty classes - including Montessori, Mandarin bilingual and the new Reggioinfluenced program - will also run from Jan. 19 to 25.

However, Russell stressed, the registration process is different for each program.

"Each program of choice has a different way of doing it. French immersion is the only one that's online. Montessori does a random draw, and that's also what we use for Mandarin bilingual," she said.

"Each program has a slightly different history and a slightly different approach to this."

Early French immersion information sessions will be held on Monday, Jan. 16 at Kilmer Elementary and Wednesday, Jan. 18 at Nestor Elementary, with 7 p.m. start times.

As well, information sessions on the Montessori program will be held Jan. 16 at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. in the Gallery Room at the Winslow campus.

On Jan. 17, an information session on the Reggio-influenced program will begin at 6: 30 p.m. in the Gallery Room at the Winslow campus. At the same time, a bilingual Mandarin program information session will run at Walton Elementary.

For more information on programs and registration, visit www.sd43.bc.ca.

jmcfee@thenownews.com