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Boerne ISD reports 710 emergent bilingual students, cites strong TELPAS and STAAR gains
Summary
Director Trianna Fontecha told trustees the district serves 710 emergent bilingual (EB) students across 33 languages, and Boerne ISD outperformed regional and state benchmarks on multiple TELPAS and STAAR measures. The district plans campus EB support teams, expanded teacher certification incentives and a Nov. 1 TEA waiver submission.
Boerne ISD’s director of multilingual programs told the board on Sept. 15 that the district currently serves 710 emergent bilingual students across elementary, middle and high schools and is pursuing targeted supports to sustain language and academic growth.
“These are Boerne ISD's long term strategic goals. We focus on 4 areas, student success, talent, fiscal responsibility, and family and community engagement,” Trianna Fontecha said, describing the district’s dual-language, ESL and Spanish-immersion options and the district’s push for teacher ESL certification.
Fontecha reported EB enrollment of 710 students distributed as 497 in elementary schools, 102 at the middle-school level and 111 at high school. She said 93 students were reclassified from EB status in the 2024–25 school year. The district’s identification and reclassification processes occur year-round and follow state reclassification rules tied to TELPAS and STAAR performance and teacher evaluation.
On assessments, Fontecha said Boerne ISD outperformed the region and state on several measures for EB and monitored students. She reported district-level percentages of students at “approaches and above” higher than regional and statewide comparators in reading and math and said TELPAS progress rates also exceeded federal targets at every level.
To support continued growth, the district will form campus-level EB support teams to analyze student data and coordinate supplemental programming, including the Summit K–12 platform for language development and assessment preparation. Fontecha said the district will submit required bilingual-exception and ESL-waiver documentation to the Texas Education Agency by Nov. 1.
Fontecha noted Boerne ISD’s language diversity — the district now records 33 languages, with Spanish, Telugu and Mandarin among the most common — and highlighted campus events that celebrate bilingualism, including Spanish spelling bees, multicultural nights and a flag display at Van Raab Elementary representing 12 student home languages.
Trustees asked for year-over-year TELPAS and STAR comparisons and for more detail on reclassification trends; Fontecha said the district will provide comparative data and continue training teachers on sheltered-instruction/sitelets strategies to build language-rich classrooms.
