Roseville Area Schools outlines multilingual services and marks first DLSI capstone cohort

Multilingual program staff for Roseville Area Schools presented an overview of the district's English language development and Dual Language Spanish Immersion (DLSI) work at the April 8 school board meeting, reporting that the district currently provides ELD services to roughly 1,351 students who speak 92 different languages.

The presentation, led by Multilingual Program Administrator Lully Flores Hanson, described the district's layered approach to serving multilingual learners, the growth in newcomer students at the middle and high school levels, and a first graduating capstone cohort from the district's DLSI pathway.

Flores Hanson said the district's top languages are Spanish, Hmong, Karen, Somali and Nepali and described a team that includes cultural liaisons representing seven communities. "We have a team of amazing cultural liaisons ... day in and day out, working with the different students and different families, advocating for them," Flores Hanson said.

District staff described three primary delivery models for ELD support: small-group pull-out ELD classes, push-in/co-teaching with classroom teachers, and collaborative grade-level supports. At the secondary level, staff said offerings include co-taught classes, year-long ELD electives and sheltered-content courses. Teachers and coordinators also described participation in a mandated literacy training (described in the meeting as a University of Minnesota graduate-level cohort aligned with the Science of Reading) that district multilingual teachers are completing.

On the DLSI program at Little Canada Elementary, presenters reported K'6 enrollment figures and broke the cohort out by home-language group. Staff listed 252 students from Spanish home-language backgrounds and 161 from English home-language backgrounds and acknowledged a minor counting discrepancy during the meeting; presenters characterized the K'6 DLSI population as about 412'413 students. Staff also reported low annual attrition in the elementary DLSI program (about 1.5 students on average across K'6).

The board heard details from secondary DLSI classes at RAMS and Roseville Area High School, including languages-and-cultures, science and social studies taught in Spanish. Presenters described hands-on projects such as DNA extraction from strawberries and a student-created mural, and said the high school offers a dedicated ELD class for 11th graders and a Spanish AP class. Staff said 15 students are enrolled in the DLSI capstone course this year; presenters added that roughly 40 students had progressed through the DLSI pathway in high school but not all chose to take every high-school elective.

A DLSI capstone student, Yamayra Sanchez Morades, told the board she hopes the program increases access to Spanish-language books that reflect students' lives: "I might not read a lot in Spanish, but I want to encourage other students ... to pursue that because adding these Spanish books instead of having them strictly translated from English books would be better to help connect them," she said.

Board members asked how pull-out ELD scheduling affects classroom instruction and were told that pull-out frequency varies by student language level and that staff are working to expand push-in and co-teaching to reduce missed core-instruction time. Board members also pressed for clarity on data counts and suggested wording and process edits for communications to families; staff said they would refine counts and follow up on requested clarifications.

Presenters asked the board to support continued work on family engagement (family institutes and advisory councils), community partnerships (including immigration legal resources provided in bilingual formats) and staffing needs. The board publicly thanked the multilingual staff and recognized the program's community partnerships and the first DLSI capstone cohort.

The district said it will continue implementation work, including family outreach and curricular alignment for Spanish- and English-language literacy.