Hernando presents 2025–28 ELL plan, cites Florida consent decree requirements

Megan Schlechter, director of federal programs for the Hernando County School District, presented the district's 2025–2028 English Language Learner (ELL) plan at a school board workshop and said the plan will be submitted to the state on April 18 for review.

The plan is prepared under the Florida consent decree, an agreement first entered in August 1990 between the Florida State Board of Education and plaintiff organizations represented by Multicultural Education, Training and Advocacy, Inc. (META) and Florida Legal Services. Schlechter summarized the decree's focus on six issues: student identification and assessment, equal access to programming, personnel, monitoring and outcome measures.

Schlechter said the district's updated ELL plan is organized in 11 sections covering student identification and placement; programmatic and instructional procedures; English language proficiency and statewide assessment procedures; monitoring; parent and guardian notification of rights; a Parent Leadership Council (renamed in the draft to the ESOL Parent Leadership Team, or EPLT); personnel training; and extensions of services. She told the board a clean copy and a strikethrough version were included in the workshop packet and that changes were "very minimal," noting updates such as testing-name changes (for example from FAST to FSA) and the EPLT renaming to reduce parent confusion.

Schlechter reported recent ELL counts to illustrate demand for services: 802 ELL students in the 2022–23 school year, 862 in the most recent full school year, and 832 ELL students as of December in the current year. She said the district has an "active ePLT" that provided input on the updates and that the district collected parent signatures on the plan. She told the board the plan will be brought back to the board on April 8 for final approval.

On monitoring and implementation, Schlechter said the plan details procedures for annual English language proficiency assessments, program monitoring, interim staffing and in-service training, and parent involvement. The presentation noted the submission-and-resubmission cycle required by state rules and the consent decree and described the district's approach to documenting parental input.

No formal vote on the plan was recorded in the workshop; Schlechter described the presentation as informational and preparatory for the upcoming submission and board action.

Less-critical details, including the full text of the consent-decree plaintiff list and minor editorial updates, are included in the plan packet provided to the board.