Venus ISD staff presented the district’s emergent bilingual annual report at the Oct. 20 board meeting, reviewing program models, student counts, state assessment outcomes and teacher certification challenges required to be reported to the Texas Education Agency.

The district’s pre‑K–5 bilingual program is a one‑way dual language immersion (Spanish/English) and the district also operates content‑based ESL programs. The report said the goal for dual language students is biliteracy by the end of fifth grade and noted that some grade levels are served by paired bilingual and ESL teachers when bilingual certification is not available.

Presenter Robyn (identified in the meeting as the emergent bilingual lead) reviewed assessment and enrollment figures from the 2023–24 school year. She reported district‑wide TELPAS composite results for English learners: 9% beginning, 41% intermediate, 39% advanced and 11% advanced‑high. The report said 72 students met the Advanced‑High composite and other state exit requirements and were eligible to exit the English learner designation last year.

On state assessments for grades 3–8, district staff reported 65% of all students scored “approaches” or higher in reading while emergent bilingual students scored 47% “approaches” or higher. For math, 48% of all students scored “approaches” or higher and 34% for emergent bilingual students. At the high school level the presenter reported 62% of freshmen and sophomores scored “approaches” or higher in English I/II overall, compared with 27% for emergent bilingual students (with eight additional EB students passing summer retests).

Robyn said staffing and certification remain the district’s greatest challenges. The presentation listed seven bilingual/ESL teacher positions last year; three of seven obtained appropriate bilingual/ESL certification during the year. The district filed the required exception waiver with TEA (the presenter said the waiver link is live and that the waiver had been approved on Feb. 26; the presentation did not specify which year the Feb. 26 approval occurred).

The report described supports beyond state requirements including AVID Excel sections for secondary emergent bilingual students, paraprofessionals who are bilingual at the high school and an extended intervention schedule on several campuses. The presenter said the district met the TEA target measure for the 2023–24 comparison the state requires — a comparison of EB students’ state average to the state EB average — and that the district decreased the number of teachers under the Spanish‑certification exception during the reviewed year.

Board members asked no formal questions that led to immediate action. Staff said they would continue to monitor certification and staffing and to file required TEA reports.