District review finds multilingual enrollment rising; board hears targeted actions to boost English and biliteracy outcomes

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 summarized findings from an evaluation conducted last year by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL). The evaluation showed steady English‑language growth for many students but noted variation by program: ESL students generally showed stronger performance on English assessments, while TWI students tended to show stronger performance in Spanish and mixed results in English. The report also found strengths in teacher commitment, classroom management and multimodal scaffolds, and suggested areas for growth including increased peer interaction, more consistent formative assessment, stronger home‑language connections and greater staff diversity.

To address those findings, district staff described several steps they are piloting or planning. The district updated a bilingual assessment framework to collect Spanish and English measures and is piloting a Nexus AI data tool to integrate data from multiple systems. At Cromerbury Middle School and Glacier Creek, bilingual resource teacher Anna Pankert is teaming with core teachers to set explicit language goals for students "who need further support to exit" English‑learner services, with a focus on increasing grammatical and academic language complexity rather than permanent scaffolding. Pankert said the approach will begin with single units and, if successful, be scaled across grades.

At the high school, bilingual resource teacher Rachel Gilbertson outlined three Madison College workshops for seniors to remove post‑secondary access barriers: an application workshop, a FAFSA (and alternate FAFSA) session, and on‑site ACCUPLACER testing to allow students to complete placement testing without transportation or schedule barriers. Gilbertson said about 20 students have already signed up for the initial session.

Board members asked about a large gap in satisfaction rates reported in the evaluation (staff satisfaction appeared lower while family satisfaction was high); staff suggested the difference may reflect increasing newcomer enrollments and a need for more training and supports for staff who do not regularly work with earlier‑stage English learners. Board members also raised technology questions (translation apps and devices) and classroom practice, and staff pointed to school improvement goals that emphasize student oral language and accountable talk.

Serschmerstad and her team described ongoing family engagement supported with Title III resources (including adult English classes and childcare for attendees), bilingual staffing (7.5 bilingual paraeducators), and continuing work to align instruction and assessment across English and Spanish. The district will circulate TWI program newsletters, continue the Seal of Biliteracy recognition, and follow up with data disaggregation to examine reclassification and on‑track measures more closely.

The board asked staff to return with additional data and with early results from the middle‑school instructional pilots; staff said they would do so as the pilot and Nexus analysis produce usable findings.