Creighton board endorses language-acquisition progress report; district outlines summer interventions for emerging multilingual students

The Creighton School District Governing Board on June 17 approved the Goal 3 progress monitoring report after district staff presented preliminary results from AzELLA testing and an update on programs for emerging multilingual students.

The report, led by Dr. Pambo with coordinator Sarah Beth George presenting classroom- and program-level inputs, showed the district has about 1,500 emerging multilingual students and preliminary AzELLA results for 1,200 of them. The district reported meeting its interim annual target for one measure: “the percent of emerging multilingual students that increase one or more levels on the Azela” with a preliminary 37% result compared with a 31% target for the year. Dr. Pambo cautioned the AzELLA results are preliminary because 300 students enrolled during the year lack last-year test data.

District staff described instructional changes and staffing intended to accelerate growth. Sarah Beth George said the summer plan includes dedicated Language Power curriculum sections for pre‑emergent and emergent learners: “we are using Language Power” and are offering several summer sections driven by data. The district is adding coaching capacity and reorganizing responsibilities: it will have four language-acquisition coaches separate from four literacy coaches and a new language-acquisition coordinator so coaches are less spread thinly.

Presenters outlined how multilingual models are assigned at the school level — dual-language immersion (DLI), a two‑hour SEI model, or pull‑out instruction — and noted staffing constraints make implementation variable by school and by grade. Sarah Beth George said districtwide there are 43 teachers who provide targeted EL-only instruction, 35 who handle both targeted and integrated blocks, and 72 who provide only integrated instruction. She also noted the district was still correcting some enrollment counts in the presentation.

Staff described outreach and family engagement efforts, including SEI family nights and teacher training. For students identified at the pre‑emergent emergent level and with two or fewer years of English instruction, the district is operating a small, districtwide summer school with six classes of about 15 students each, using unit pre/post checks from the Language Power curriculum to monitor progress.

Board members asked for additional disaggregation and tools to track subgroup growth. Dr. Pambo and staff said the district will use EduCLIMBER, a new data platform, to enable filters by subgroup and to permit leaders to examine multilingual learners who also receive special-education services; staff reported roughly 20% of the multilingual learners at the pre‑emergent emergent level are also receiving special-education services. Sarah Beth George said the district is adding a correspondence-language field to enrollment records to better identify families’ translation needs.

After questions, President Carrillo moved to approve the Goal 3 progress monitoring report; the motion passed with unanimous board support.

The approval signals the board’s acceptance of the district’s near-term inputs: summer Language Power sections, expanded coaching capacity, a language-acquisition coordinator position, and implementation-focused training for targeted teachers. Staff said they will return with refined AzELLA static files, corrected school-level counts and updated implementation data after summer sessions conclude.

Board members also asked staff to provide more detailed, disaggregated outcomes for subgroups (including SPED and specific language groups) as EduCLIMBER is deployed and data are refined.