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Hillside reports gains for multilingual learners; ESL director cites exits, staffing gaps
Summary
The district's ESL and World Languages director reported increases in multilingual-learner enrollment, a rise in students exiting ESL services, and staffing shortages for bilingual-certified teachers that require state waivers in some languages.
The Hillside Public School District’s director of ESL and World Languages presented data Aug. 28 showing growth in the district’s multilingual-learner (ML) population and improved English-language progress on the ACCESS assessment.
Director Opereke said the district ended the previous school year with 518 ML students, and at the meeting she reported the district was opening the new year with about 497 registered MLs and still enrolling. She said 54 students exited ESL services this year after meeting criteria, compared with 18 exits the prior year.
Opereke described how ACCESS scores have shifted as the ML population grew: gains in listening and comprehension were notable, while speaking and writing remain areas for focused instruction. "Level 3 is really exciting because at level 3, that means that our students have the baseline to excel," she said.
The director said the district must provide bilingual education when a language group reaches 20 or more students; Hillside has 20 or more students in Spanish, Haitian Creole and Portuguese but has been unable to recruit certified bilingual teachers for those programs. She said the district will file bilingual waivers where necessary and provide two periods of ESL instruction by certified ESL teachers. Opereke said there are eight certified ESL teachers at the elementary level and six at the secondary level.
Opereke highlighted partnerships and interventions: she credited a progress‑monitoring contractor, Flashlight360, for supporting speaking and writing benchmarks and a partnership with YDC in Newark that supplied two bilingual clinicians for tier‑3 mental‑health supports. She also said the district reopened an adult ESL academy this summer that served more than 100 families.
Superintendent Glover and others praised the work. Glover noted that Hillside was ranked among the top 100 districts nationally for growth among multilingual learners in a Flashlight360 review, and he encouraged staff to publicize that progress.
The presentation included school-level trends: AP Morris and the high school were identified as hubs for ML enrollment, and several elementary schools showed notable gains in attendance and proficiency targets tied to district goals.
