From day one, when Yu Ying opened our doors to the first 130 students, we were the only public or private school of our kind in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Demand for Yu Ying's innovative program has grown every year since, resulting in more than 600 applications for about 50 spots in the 2012-13 entrance lottery.Yu Ying utilizes the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme in a dual English and Mandarin Chinese immersion environment and currently serves students from Pre-K to 5th grade. Children in the Pre-K program are fully immersed in Mandarin Chinese each day of the week and Kindergarten through 5th grade students have all classes taught in English or Mandarin, on alternating days.Now in our fifth year, Yu Ying has already achieved high levels of academic, organizational and financial success. In 2012 DC CAS testing, Yu Ying students improved their overall proficiency by 7.4%, placing the school as the 4th highest performing charter elementary, language focused or not, in DC. Also standing as a reminder of Yu Ying's rapid growth is the new school building and Nature Center at 220 Taylor Street, secured through the support of city, state and nonprofit agencies and renovated in 2012 as the permanent home of our elementary school program.As a result of a partnership between Yu YIng and four other public language immersion programs, students will feed into the DC International School ( www.dcinternationalschool.org ) beginning in 2014-15.