Following an influx of backlash from the community, the McLean administration officially restored Chinese to the world languages curriculum on May 8. This reversed a late-April decision to eliminate in-person instruction, which would have forced students to relocate to Marshall Academy and cost Chinese teacher Kuan-Chen Pearson her full-time post.

Students will once again be able to take Chinese at McLean next year. Pearson has also regained her job.

“I am just very happy,” Pearson said. “I think in my last year, I can be relaxed. Otherwise, it is unfair.”

After McLean canceled Chinese on April 23, parents began reaching out to both the FCPS school board and Principal Raven Jones, requesting that the administration reconsider its decision.

“I think our actions really helped create pressure, and the school realized they were in the wrong because of the amount of pressure generated by parents and students,” said Tian Olson, Secretary of the Virginia Asian Advisory Board. “We are interested in knowing what measures weighed in on the decision and how we can make this more sustainable in the future.”

Likewise, Principal Raven Jones attributes the restoration of Chinese to ardent student and parent advocacy.

“We didn’t cut the language as a punitive measure,” Jones said. “I don’t think we, [as an administration], necessarily fully understood how important having Chinese was to our community, and how deeply tied the culture is to the language.”

According to Jones, McLean’s initial decision to remove Chinese came as a result of imminent budgeting concerns. McLean’s projected student-to-teacher ratio would not be viable, especially given inadequate county funding.

“We staff schools based on student enrollment with a metric called Full-Time Equivalent (FTE), meaning we get a full-time teacher per so many kids,” Jones said. “The district formula for this year was 31.2 students for every teacher. We lost around 100 students to Langley because of redistricting, and calculations for staffing didn’t go back up as we anticipated because of budget shortfalls.”

The shortfall left McLean with 14 excess staffing positions for the 2026-27 school year. Chinese was prioritized for removal, along with other electives.

“You can’t cut core classes; those are required to graduate. So we look at elective classes and long-term trends over time, about five years,” Jones said. “Chinese was not the only language we cut—it’s just the one that got the most attention. We also cut to Spanish, science classes and the ESOL program.”

Data tracking enrollment trends for German, Latin and Chinese—historically less popular languages—shows that student counts were all around the same for the 2026-27 school year. The defining factor was the trends leading up to this year, which showed a considerable decline for Chinese, unlike the other two languages.

“We started our Chinese program in the 2022-23 school year with 127 students across all levels,” Jones said. “However, we steadily lost numbers for a variety of reasons, and we ran it last year with only 87 students after post-first quarter class transfers.”

McLean plans to combine five Chinese sections into four because of low enrollment, a change that will reduce Pearson to part-time. Initially, 87 students had registered for the classes, but that projection dropped significantly due to student dropouts and freshmen opting to attend Thomas Jefferson High School after receiving their acceptance in April.

“I don’t have to go to another school [to fill my remaining time], but I am still missing one section out of the required five for a full time position,” Pearson said. “ I am willing to do another section in the ESOL department.”

Even after the reinstatement, the uncertainty surrounding the status of Chinese has led many students to drop the course entirely in favor of other electives.

“I was originally in AP Chinese because I wanted to continue my Chinese learning to the highest level,” sophomore Rebecca Sarmiento said. “I probably won’t be taking Chinese anymore, just because I realized that it might not fit well with my schedule.”

Many parents also remain dissatisfied with the school’s handling of these developments—specifically due to the lack of community collaboration and engagement.

“The whole process was so opaque; they did not really involve parents in their decision process,” Olson said. “We don’t know for sure how McLean addressed the budgetary concerns.”

Still, Olson lauds the Chinese community for its courageous advocacy.

“It’s very encouraging that I saw so many parents step up to make their voice heard,” Olson said. “It’s a very positive change. The majority of these parents are born and raised in China. Coming from our home country, we were taught to be submissive to authority. But that’s not the same in America. Had all the parents carried their old mentality, nothing would have changed.”

Because funding is so precarious, McLean’s ability to support Chinese class, along with other non-essential electives, must be reconsidered on a yearly basis.

“Ever program is re-evaluated every year, not just Chinese, because our budget changes yearly,” Jones said. “It really does impact everything in our school, down to what kind of field trips we’re able to run, because you have to be very frugal at that point.”

The seemingly temporary nature of this decision has frustrated many parents.

“It sounds like the process will be reevaluated annually. What will happen in the future?” Olson said. “If this happens again, the parents and students absolutely need to step up to make our wish known. The work needs to start now, and we need to find out how we can make keeping Chinese sustainable.”

McLean’s budget initially could not support Pearson’s teaching position for the upcoming school year. However, the FCPS Senior Leadership Team intervened and approved a one-time funding exception. The team, which consists of the superintendent and other members, sets the district’s policy.

“It took senior leadership coming in and saying, ‘We can loosen some constraints,'” Jones said. “Those aren’t calls we schools have the authority to make. There was literally no way for us to figure out a solution with the constraints we originally had; we tried for weeks. The Senior Leadership Team gave us more flexibility with what we could trade funding allocations for within the school.”

Allocating this funding towards Chinese has curtailed the potential expansion of other school programs.

“Before, we were planning to get an instructional coach this year to help with our students with disabilities and multilingual learners. However, we’re having to put this on hold for a year,” Jones said. “We’re also having to get creative with how we support these essential needs students. We have some staff members who are going to do double duty.”

Within her capacity as a member of the Virginia Asian Advisory Board, Olson has been working with legislators to devise solutions for supporting the Chinese program. She believes that an increase in funding specifically for world languages may ameliorate the crisis.

“I met with Senator Tim Kaine and Senator Mark Warner to share a proposed bill for a federal grant to fund high school Chinese programs,” Olson said. “I also brainstormed with multiple delegates. All of them confirmed that the state budget for fiscal year 2027 has already been decided, leaving no wiggle room.”

Olson also reached out to Jones about the Virginia Department of Education’s Critical National Security Language Initiatve Grant Program, which funds full-time teaching positions for critical foreign language instruction. The two are working together to apply for the grant, which requires biennial renewal and approval by the Virginia General Assembly.

“I am hopeful that we will find a long-term solution,” Olson said. “I believe a plan that will put all these uncertainties to rest is having a designated line item for the world language program written into the state budget, so when the budget is sent to localities, that specific pot of money for world languages will not be dispersed for anything else.”

Ultimately, Jones expresses regret for McLean’s lack of attention towards protecting the Chinese community’s cultural identity.

“One of the parents that reached out to me shared a story about how her son is able to talk to her grandmother back at home because of the Chinese he learned at McLean. This is something we don’t want to take away,” Jones said. “Had we known how deeply connected people were to the heritage aspect of removing Chinese, we would have thought more closely about how everything folded out.”

This story was originally published on The Highlander on May 24, 2026.