School Committee supports ELL corrective action plan

Date: 12/23/2014

EAST LONGMEADOW – At its Dec. 15 meeting, the School Committee voted unanimously to support a district correction plan centered on English-language learning (ELL), which could allow for one additional licensed full-time ELL teacher.

School Committee Vice Chair Richard Freccero said in the district there were eight ELL students in 2010 and now the district has 59 ELL students.

Fifty of those students require direct services, Curriculum Director Valerie Annear said. Of those students, several are level one or two in their English language proficiency.

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) recommends two and a half hours per day of direct English as a second language instruction for students in levels one or two, she added.

The district is currently not meeting that recommended amount of time for ELL students, she added. The district has two ELL staff members and the addition of a third ELL teacher could potentially remedy this issue. 

The two district ELL staff members also currently teach 25 students each, which equates to less individual time with students, Annear stated.

If a third full-time ELL staff member were hired, a full-time teacher would likely be at Meadow Brook Elementary for K-2, a staff member would be shared for grades 3 through 5 who would potentially also teach for a small portion of their time at Meadow Brook, she added.

There would also be a shared ELL teacher for Birchland Park Middle School and East Longmeadow High School.

“We probably had students then as well who just weren’t identified [as needing ELL courses],” she said. “The other component, which I think is probably a larger component is the fact that we’ve had an increase in our population. In the past four years since I’ve been here, there were a couple of years where we ended up with 12 new students in a matter of the same school year.”

Throughout the state there has also been a tremendous increase in the ELL student population, Annear noted.

Within the district’s elementary schools there are 27 students requiring ELL services at Meadow Brook Elementary School, nine students at Mapleshade Elementary, and one ELL student at Mountain View School, she said.

East Longmeadow High School and Birchland Park Middle School have about six to eight ELL students each.

Annear said 13 different languages are spoken by ELL student in the district.

There are also another nine students who are designated with a status of former limited English proficiency (FLEP) learning. After ELL students move past level six they become FLEP designees. With this designation, teachers monitor their English proficiency skills for two years, Annear added. After that period, FLEP students are no longer entered into the ELL statistics.

“We find the younger that students come in, they move pretty rapidly through the proficiency levels,” she added. 

The corrective action plan calls for the district to have three ELL teachers by the end of 2016, she said. One major element to be considered when hiring an additional ELL teacher is whether that position could be sustained in the district’s budget.

“The [corrective action plan] also states that as you submit that plan, the [School Committee] chair and the superintendent need to write a letter supporting that plan,” Superintendent of Schools Gordon Smith said. “And the plan, right now, what's written there, is to refer to this budget development process to look to add another licensed full-time ELL teacher.”
 
In other business, Smith said he attended the Western Massachusetts Coalition of Education Leaders meeting on Dec. 3, which addressed current key issues in Massachusetts education such as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test and district alignments to the Common Core State Standards.

In July, Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School Committee Chair Marc Ducey and Superintendent of Schools M. Martin O'Shea were instrumental in forming a group called “The Super Regional School District Group,” which eventually became the Western Massachusetts Coalition of Education Leaders, Smith said.

“We narrowed down and hopefully this group is going to be able to put together a position statement, specifically around three points,” Smith said. “One, that the speed and the amount of unfunded mandates that have been coming out of [DESE]. So, just a statement around that and how challenging it is for school districts across Massachusetts to keep up with that.”

A rough draft position statement was assembled by the coalition at its Dec. 3 meeting, he added. The school committees being represented in the coalition will likely have a chance to vote on an endorsement of the position statement during a meeting sometime in January.

School districts that might be invited to have representation within the coalition in the future could include Chicopee, Holyoke, Springfield, and possibly Pittsfield.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” School Committee member Elizabeth Marsian-Boucher said. “I think there’s power in numbers. They need to understand that we don't feel heard and we're really not.”