Speakers of languages other than English can now find information about Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in one click from the MCPS Web site's home page.

Web sites have been created in Chinese, French, Korean, Spanish, and Vietnamese to enable non-English-speaking families to more easily find news, documents, and information about services.

Links to the sites can be found just below the featured story on the MCPS home page. Each site also can be accessed via the following Web address (simply replace the language name after the slash to go to another language site): [ www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/chinese ]www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/chinese

Each language site links to the Navigating the System guide for parents, Parent Connection newsletter, and Aim High booklets. Each site also features links to streaming video of the Our Schools Today TV program and to the QuickNotes e-mail newsletter. Visitors also will find links to Web sites for English as a Second Language/Bilingual Programs, the Downcounty Consortium, and the Middle School Magnet Consortium.

This is the first phase of a project to improve access to information in other languages on the MCPS Web site. Information and links on these sites will grow in future months. Suggestions and comments can be e-mailed to the Web Services Team at webmaster@mcpsmd.org

Viewers of these sites should be sure their Web browser is set to view Web pages in Unicode UTF-8, the international standard. In Internet Explorer, go to View in the dropdown menu, pull down to Encoding, and select Unicode UTF-8. Viewing of English Web pages is not impacted, so users can keep their browsers at this setting at all times.