J’aime apprendre à parler français.

If you have a child who just entered seventh grade in the Mount Sinai School District and want him or her to be able to understand the above sentence in French, you’re out of luck.

French courses were pulled from the seventh-grade curriculum this school year after they didn’t garner the required enrollment numbers.

Now if students want to learn basic words and phrases in French (in case you’re wondering, that sentence means “I love learning to speak French”), they’ll have to find another way.

Superintendent Anthony Bonasera informed parents via a July 18 letter that the district won’t be offering the language to incoming seventh graders, as courses typically aren’t offered when less than 20 students sign up. As of last winter, just 17 students chose French.

“Historically, our French students drop the language after the Regents exam, leaving less than a dozen or so for the advanced classes in the final two years,” Dr. Bonasera wrote in the letter. “That being the case, quite simply, in a world where dollars matter, the low enrollment classes are not fiscally responsible.”

In that same letter, Dr. Bonasera asked parents to re-enroll their incoming seventh graders in French by August 1 in a last-ditch effort to see if the number would increase.

It did not.

In fact, the number of students interested in French shrank to 10, maintaining the district’s decision to pull the plug on seventh grade French. The language will still be offered to students in the higher grades.

A Facebook group called “Save Mount Sinai French” sprang up soon after news spread. The group had 59 members on Tuesday. Some of them expressed their frustration on the group’s wall.

“Our competitive global economy makes it essential for our kids to have opportunities and options to learn multiple languages,” one member wrote. “So why are we cutting back?”

Another member said she plans to teach French to her son at home and possibly enroll him in an immersion camp in Canada.

Denise May, whose child is going into seventh grade, is one of many parents upset over French not being offered.

“It’s not the best decision,” she said.

Her child is taking Spanish this school year, but she said all students should have the option to learn more than one foreign language in school.

Dr. Bonasera said in an Aug. 9 letter that students can receive credit for a French course taken outside the district, so long as they pass the district’s final exam.

He said at a school boarding meeting last Tuesday that the district is looking into alternative methods of providing foreign language instruction. Methods could include offering courses online through partnerships with universities, neighboring districts and businesses. Courses in French and other foreign languages could be offered that way.

“We’re going to try to marry up with another method so we’re not limited to what our teachers’ certifications are,” he said. “Ideally, students could take any language they wanted to take.

He added that online and other options may be less expensive than offering more languages through the district, and said the options could potentially be available to students younger than seventh grade, the first grade level a foreign language is currently offered in schools.

“There’s a whole world opening in terms of this,” board president Bob Sweeney said.

But not all parents are so sure.

Ms. May isn’t in favor of alternate methods that don’t involve in-person instruction.

“I don’t like the idea of putting kids in front of a computer and having it teach them,” she said.

Dr. Bonasera reminded parents at last Tuesday’s meeting that French is only being scrapped in seventh grade this school year.

“If we have 20 students next year, we’ll have French,” he said.

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