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District review finds multilingual enrollment rising; board hears targeted actions to boost English and biliteracy outcomes
Summary
District staff presented a multilingual services evaluation showing growing numbers of multilingual learners and mixed assessment results across program types. The board heard planned actions including improved bilingual assessment, targeted coaching in middle schools, Nexus AI data work, family outreach and college‑access workshops for seniors.
The Middleton‑Cross Plains Area School District on Oct. 13 received a detailed review of its multilingual services and a set of action steps aimed at strengthening English proficiency and biliteracy for students across programs. Mandy Serschmerstad, director of multilingual services, told the board that "as of October 3, we were looking at about 5 36 multilingual students" districtwide and that the share of students at the earliest English proficiency levels has increased in recent years.
The presentation explained program options: English as a Second Language (ESL) with bilingual support, a two‑way immersion (TWI) dual‑language program that started in kindergarten in 2017 and is now serving students through middle school, and heritage‑language Spanish classes for grades 6–12. Serschmerstad said 64% of multilingual students speak Spanish at home, and that the district serves families from a range of countries; roughly half of the multilingual students were born in the United States.
Serschmerstad…
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