GREENWICH, Conn. (AP) – Mandarin Chinese could be taught at Greenwich High School next fall, adding the town to a growing number of school districts in the United States that offer one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.

If accepted by the Board of Education, the plan to teach Chinese would place the language with Spanish, French, German, Italian and Latin among others taught at the 2,700-student high school.

Chris Winters, the school district’s director of foreign language and English as a second language, said the push was due to interest expressed by parents.

“There was also a recognition on the part of the schools that teaching an additional language, especially one that is spoken by 1.3 billion people, would be worth doing,” he said.

Greenwich Country Day School announced plans last spring to begin teaching Mandarin Chinese this fall. And Brunswick School and Greenwich Academy have offered Mandarin for several years.

Wen Hsu, former principal and board member of the Chinese Language School of Connecticut, said demand is growing among high school-aged children.

“We get calls all the time from parents who live in Greenwich and whose kids are interested in learning Chinese,” she said.

The Chinese Language School’s main campus is in Greenwich and operates in Westport and Stamford.

Hsu said about one-third of students at the Chinese Language School have no Asian heritage, and most of those are drawn to the language because it is timely and interesting to them.

Irene Driscoll, a Greenwich High School parent, cited China’s status as a rising economic superpower as a spur for teaching the language.

“You have a lot of Wall Streeters here that do business with China,” she said. “It is becoming conventional wisdom that our country needs to teach our children Chinese.”

Public policy is following. The State Department has designated Chinese as a “critical language” and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., has proposed legislation to spend $1.3 billion for Chinese language and culture instruction in American schools.

In June, the Asia Society, a New York-based nonprofit organization intended to strengthen the relationships between Asia and the United States, said in a report that U.S. school districts were not prepared to meet the rising demand for Chinese language instruction. A major problem is a lack of qualified teachers, the group said.

About 24,000 American students in grades seven through 12 study Chinese, a language spoken by 1.3 billion people worldwide and more than 1 million students learn French, which is spoken by 80 million people, the report said.

However, the disparity is shrinking. Between 1998 and 2002, the number of college students studying Chinese rose 20 percent to more than 34,000, according to the report.

Five districts in Connecticut offer Chinese, including schools in East Hartford, Bloomfield, Norwalk, Bridgeport and New Haven, according to Mary Ann Hanson, world languages consultant at the state Department of Education.

Teaching Chinese in the state lags behind other language instruction. In Connecticut, about 70,000 students are learning Spanish, while about 300 are learning Mandarin Chinese, Hanson said.

A pilot Chinese teacher exchange program that began this year with the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China could help raise the number of students learning the language. Five Chinese teachers are participating in Connecticut.