Both Eanes middle schools are dropping the Latin program due to a decline in enrollment. This action has upset Latin teachers and students alike. Alan Abbe, who teaches Latin 1, Latin 3 and Latin 4 honors, has been at Westlake for 26 years. This year, he is teaching Latin at the high school along with West Ridge and Hill Country middle schools, before middle schools fully drop the program 2025.
Assistant Principal Dianne Parks says that she loves students having choices for which classes to take at the middle schools.
“I love having as many choices as possible at the middle school level,” Parks said. “We didn’t want Latin to be dropped from the middle school options. It’s not that the opportunity for students is lost – the opportunity is simply delayed.”
The Latin club has 105 students, but Abbe says that the drop of the program in the middle schools will impact the program in high school.
“[The drop] definitely hurts our program at the high school,” Abbe said. “[Middle schoolers who took Latin] come to high school, and they’ve already had that preparation, and they’re at a higher level of thinking.”
Abbe and Latin and AP English teacher Natalie Cannon think that the decline in enrollment is due to the lack of publicity about the Latin program’s achievements and the focus is instead on the class’ tests and exams.
“Every year we go to Nationals, we have people who are scoring in the top five in the nation, top ten in the nation, in whatever events they’re participating in,” Abbe said. ”We used to be the fourth largest Latin club in the world before Covid.”
Despite their prominence, Abbe and Cannon feel the Latin program isn’t fully recognized for their achievements.
“You have Westlake Nation that puts out all the sports stuff,” Cannon said. “You hear about robotics, you hear about some little programs where they have a lot of support, but you don’t hear a lot about other academic things.”
Latin students have also been very vocal about the drop of the program at the middle schools. Many students have been in the program for four or more years and have thoughts about why the drop has occurred.
“Current advertising doesn’t show what actually goes on in the class and club,” senior Claire Roseck said. “No one really knows about what the Latin program gets up to. They need to start showing the actual competitions to students who might be interested, instead of just showing people what we do in the actual classroom.”
While students and teachers are sad to see the Latin program shrink through the changes, they are also focusing on what being in the class has given them.
“The Latin club has brought me closer to a lot of people that I’ve met, and it’s created some great friendships and memories,” sophomore Krishna Hemkumar said. “I went to a competition, and I don’t think I’ll ever find something like that again.”
