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Georgetown County reports 548 multilingual learners; district outlines supports, data tools and family engagement
Summary
The district’s multilingual instructional coach told trustees the system serves about 548 multilingual learners—352 'full service,' 113 monitored and 83 exited—and described coaching, the Elevation data platform and outreach strategies to support language acquisition and classroom access.
Tara Gillette, the district’s multilingual learner instructional coach, told the Board that the Georgetown County School District serves about 548 multilingual learners and described how the district organizes support services.
"We have about 548 MLPs in our district. 352 of those students are full service students," Gillette said, using the district’s terminology for students receiving regular, direct language instruction. She told trustees the district also monitors 113 students and reports 83 students have exited the program after meeting English proficiency criteria on the ACCESS (ACCESS testing was named as the English‑language proficiency assessment).
Gillette described the instructional coach role: supporting MLP teachers and mainstream classroom teachers, offering strategies, coordinating with nurses and special‑education staff, and helping families that do not speak English access school services. She said the Elevation platform has been particularly useful for managing data, intervention records and state and federal compliance requirements: "Elevation has been amazing... it gives us a way to monitor and be able to share information with the state and federal" programs.
Trustees asked how many of the multilingual learners have very limited English; Gillette said at the high school level, among roughly 120 MLP students she works with, about 20 are very limited and some newcomers have had long gaps in formal schooling. She and other trustees discussed newcomer/ESOL class models and the tradeoffs of immersion versus separate newcomer programming.
Gillette also identified the district’s top three languages as Spanish, Filipino and Chinese and outlined family‑engagement efforts such as Spanish Heritage Month events, spring fairs with translators and use of high‑school ambassadors to support registration and communication.
The presentation included no new budgetary figures; trustees asked for continued updates and for planning data to inform possible newcomer programming and additional supports at the high‑school level.
Next steps: district coaches will continue training teachers on Elevation and I‑Ready, plan for summer Read‑to‑Succeed capacity, and evaluate newcomer/ESOL class options at the secondary level.
