Lisa Trang wants something for her two children that she never had: fluency in both English and Vietnamese. Thanks to a program at Rose City Park Elementary School, she was getting that wish.

Trang, whose parents took refuge in the U.S. as Vietnamese boat people, grew up speaking Vietnamese but never learned to read or write the language, something she regrets to this day. She’s made it a goal to preserve her heritage and culture in her biracial kids, and knows Vietnamese is not an easy language to pick up. But the Northeast Portland elementary school has a Vietnamese Dual Language Immersion program, or VDLI, which entails 50-50 instruction in English and Vietnamese from two teachers with distinct specialties in each language.

It’s already paid off. “Everywhere I went, it was like, wow,

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