Miss Gomez, the district multilingual program presenter, told the Elmwood Park CUSD 401 Board of Education the district currently identifies 820 students as English learners, with 522 students from Spanish-speaking homes and 176 from Ukrainian-speaking homes. “So total, we had 820 students that are identified in the district as being ELs,” she said.

The presentation described staffing and program placement: 32% of district staff hold EL or bilingual certification, and paraprofessionals who speak Ukrainian and Spanish are positioned at the high school to support students in content-area classes. Miss Gomez said the district uses a mix of push-in support, pull-out groups and co-taught sections to match students’ WIDA ACCESS proficiency levels.

Miss Gomez reviewed program models required under Illinois State Board of Education rules, explaining that Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) is required when more than 20 students in a single language group are at a building (applied here to Spanish and Ukrainian), while the Transitional Program of Instruction (TPI) serves languages with smaller populations. She described John Mills Elementary as the site of the district’s dual-language (50/50 Spanish–English) program and outlined plans to provide heritage-language course options for students advancing to Elm Middle School and the high school so students may continue language development across grades 6–12.

On assessment, Miss Gomez said the district’s preliminary ACCESS results showed 13.3% of EL students met the state exit criterion (a composite score of 4.8 or higher), exceeding the Illinois state exit rate of 7.1%. She described how district staff use domain and composite data to determine placements (for example, classifying students as full-timers or part-timers based on composite thresholds) and noted the district’s participation in the Illinois EL Consortium to compare growth metrics. “Three of the four buildings were in the blue,” she said, referring to higher-than-expected growth on the consortium’s effect-size indicators.

Miss Gomez also described extracurricular recognition tied to biliteracy: the district’s world-language testing for a Seal of Biliteracy or commendation at graduation, noting students have taken the assessment in Spanish, Ukrainian, Russian, Italian and Arabic.

On funding and family engagement, Miss Gomez reported the district received $86,031 in Title 3 state funding for the year; she said those funds support instructional materials, a portion of a multilingual instructional specialist’s salary, professional development, parent engagement and a private-school allotment supporting a partnership with Saint Salastien School. She invited the community to the district’s bilingual parent advisory committee meeting scheduled for Thursday, May 21.

In question-and-answer that followed, board members asked how students are identified and how mistakes on the home-language survey are handled. Miss Gomez explained that the district screens students whose registration indicates another language is spoken at home, administers WIDA ACCESS annually until a student reaches the 4.8 exit threshold, and follows ISBE’s appeal process when reclassification is challenged. She said the district attempts to catch errors during summer registration and by inviting families for screenings when a mismatch is identified.

Miss Gomez closed by reiterating plans for continued consortium participation, professional development, and preparation for upcoming ACCESS testing windows.