e February 24th meeting of the Committee on Special Populations. My name is Rita montoya. I'm a board member at large and the chair of the Special Populations Committee. This year, our committee will continue to working to enhance the experiences of all of our special population students in all of our schools. We
recognize that most of our special populations, designated students, spend a significant portion of their time in general education classes, and our mission is to understand who our special population designated students are and how they and their families navigate the school experience.
So before we continue, I want to give my colleagues a moment to introduce themselves, and I'll start to my left. Yes. Good morning. Buenos dias. My name is Grace Rivera Oven and I represent district one. And to my right. Good afternoon, Laura Stewart representing district
four. Thank you. And so today we'll review and approve the informational summary for the last meeting, which was on November 18th, 2025. Staff will then present on how M.C.P.S. identifies and serves emerging multilingual learners in our
school system. I would like to ask my colleagues if they have any questions or concerns about the informational summary for November 18th, 2025 meeting. Seeing none. If there are no concerns, we'll go ahead and begin our agenda. So I would
like to welcome our M.C.P.S. team to the table. And if you could just take a minute to please introduce yourselves for the benefit of the audience as well as my colleagues. Good afternoon. Catherine Morales, associate superintendent for the Division of Multilingual Education. Thank you. Good
afternoon, supervisor, Division of multilingual Education. Supervisor for Cfts and SLI programing. Buenas tardes, Rachel Carson, supervisor in the Division of Multilingual Education. Good afternoon. Margarita Bohórquez, director
of international admissions and enrollment. Good afternoon. Norca Padilla, coordinator of international admissions and enrollment. Hello. Nikki Porter, chief academic officer. Fantastic. Thank you. So when you're ready, you can go ahead
and begin. Your slide. Good afternoon. Buenas tardes. Members of the board. Thank you for the opportunity to present today on emergent multilingual learners in Montgomery County Public Schools. Next slide please. Emergent multilingual
learners represent one of the fastest growing and most diverse student population in our district. They bring tremendous strength linguistic, cultural and experiential. And they are an integral part of who we are as m.c.p.s. At the
same time, ensuring their academic success is both a civil rights obligation under federal law and a critical component of our district's overall achievement goals. Today's report will provide an overview of who our emergent multilingual learners are, are
how their needs are evolving, and how the district is responding to ensure they have a meaningful access to grade level instruction and opportunities to succeed. Over the past several years, M.c.p.s. Has experienced shifts not only in the number of multilingual
learners we serve, but also in student entry patterns. These shifts require coordinated, system wide responses. Language development is foundational to every subject area. When students cannot fully access
instruction due to language barriers, it affects academic growth, credit attainment, graduation pathways, and long term outcomes. While our data show important areas of progress, they also highlight persistent challenges and uneven implementation of
supports across settings. Addressing these challenges requires strengthening instructional practices, expanding specialized programs, building staff capacity, and partnering closely with families and communities. This presentation is intended as an
informational deep dive. We will share data, describe current programs and services, discuss areas of need, and outline actions underway to improve outcomes for our multilingual learners. Our goal is clear that every emergent
multilingual learner in M.C.P.S. has equitable access to rigorous learning, developed strong English proficiency, and graduates prepared for college, career and civic life. Thank you and we look forward to your questions and discussion. Next
slide please. Our work with emergent multilingual learners is grounded in a long history of civil rights law and research. Before the 1960s, students had few protections and limited access to grade
level instruction. The Civil rights movement established education for emergent multilingual learners as an issue of equity and federal responsibility, leading to title VII protections and accountability. Today. M.C.P.S.
continues this legacy by ensuring simultaneous access to grade level content and language development aligned to Wida and federal requirements. We also affirm multilingualism as a strength and asset to our
community. Next slide please. Emergent multilingual learners in MCPs are a diverse group whose strength enrich our schools. Students represent many languages, cultures, and countries of origin. Some enter
in early grades, while others arrive later and must quickly adapt to new academic expectations. A subset have experienced interrupted schooling and require targeted supports. This diversity reflects the strength of the
M.C.P.S. community. Next slide please. I will now turn it over to Miss Bohórquez. Next we will review how students enter M.c.p.s. And I are our identified, enrolled and placed.
This includes emergent multilingual learner identification, grade placement and credit evaluations. Next slide please. Identification for Eld services follows a state required process to
ensure consistency and equity. First families complete a home language survey during enrollment to determine potential language needs. Secondary international students also receive a thorough review of foreign transcripts for proper grade
placement and a comprehensive credit evaluation that transfers all credits earned abroad. Students then take an English language proficiency screener, either at school or through the International Admissions and Enrollment
department to assess eligibility if screened at II. The student then meets with an ESL therapeutic counselor, or etc. for a quick well-being intake. Parents are formally notified of results and services. Lastly, an
accommodations plan is developed to support instruction and state assessments. Next slide please. In an effort to honor our students assets and educational attainment, the department has significantly upgraded and
streamlined the grade placement and credit evaluation process for students following a three year, cross-functional collaboration with the Curriculum Office for math, science, Social Studies, and English. We developed a comprehensive global coursework
database that ensures accurate grade placement, in which students are now placed in their correct grade levels alongside their age appropriate peers. Sets a clear graduation pathway due to improved data that allows for immediate effective graduation planning
and center student equity. By acknowledging their previous academic rigor and affirming our students identities to ensure they have immediate access to new and advanced learning. Next slide please. I will now turn it over to Miss
Morales. We will now review key. Thank you. We will now review key data that provides a snapshot of our emergent multilingual learner population. Next slide please. Over the past six years, M.c.p.s. Has
served a large and growing population of emergent multilingual learners. Enrollment rose sharply from about 25,400 students in 2021 to over 32,500 in 2025, with a
slight decline this year. Despite this dip, enrollment remains significantly higher than in earlier years. Schools continue to serve newcomers and students entering at later grade levels across all grade levels. These trends inform
staffing, program planning and resource allocation. Next slide please. Emergent multilingual learners are served across all grade levels with the largest concentration at the elementary level. A smaller number of
students are served in special programs. The vast majority participate in the Eld program. Students with limited or interrupted formal education or slife placements, and a small number of parent refusals. Some
families exercise their right to decline English language development services. However, these students remain identified as emergent multilingual learners and are required to participate in the annual Wida Access Assessment each year until they meet state
criteria. This distribution highlights the need for strong supports across the entire K-12 continuum, particularly in early grades. Next slide please. Emergent multilingual learners are distributed across all
proficiency levels, from entering or English language development level one, LP one to bridging LP four. The largest group of students is at LP three, indicating many learners are progressing but
still require support. A substantial number of students remain at LP one and two, particularly in elementary schools. Students at higher levels continue to need academic language support to access grade level content.
Next slide please. I will now turn it over to Miss Carson. This slide shows the movement of multilingual learners into and out of M.c.p.s. During fiscal year 2025. Our ML
population is dynamic with significant movement throughout the year. In fiscal year 2025, over 6000 students entered M.c.p.s. Including kindergartners, new arrivals and transfers. At the same time,
nearly 6900 students exited due to graduation, transfers or other factors. This resulted in a net decrease of 888 students that school year. Ongoing mobility requires flexible
planning and responsive support across the system. Next slide please. These tables illustrate the expected annual growth in English language proficiency based on students initial access level, with the
expectation that students will exit the program upon reaching an overall score of 4.5 within the time frame established by Msde. Schools earn points on the Maryland Report Card for
each student that meets these growth. These growth targets generally, students at lower proficiency levels progress more rapidly, while growth tends to slow at higher levels of proficiency. The tables also
indicate the typical number of years students may participate in Eld services before reaching proficiency, achieving an overall score of 4.5 is considered evidence of English proficiency, as defined by Msde.
Students who do not attain proficiency within the expected timeframe are identified as long term emergent multilingual learners, which results in a loss of points for schools on the Msde report card. These targets serve as critical benchmarks for our work and
underscore the need to align systems and structures to ensure students can realistically meet expected growth trajectories. Next slide please. Let's take a look at this chart. We see kindergarten
through 12th grade students listed here. We are going to explain the difference between the data represented by the kindergarten bar versus the first through 12th grade bar. After taking their first Wida access assessment, kindergarten
students can either meet the 4.5 we to access score and exit Eld services or continue to receive Eld services as they have not yet met the exit criteria. In fiscal year 2025,
107 kindergartners scored a 4.5 on their first Wida access, whereas 2845 kindergartners had their baseline proficiency established with their first Wida Access Assessment score of
4.4 or below. Now let's shift and look at the first through 12th grade. The bars show the number of students who met or did not meet their English language growth targets. Results vary by grade level, with stronger outcomes in some
upper in some elementary grades and greater challenges in upper grades. These findings highlight the need to strengthen systems and supports to accelerate language development. They also emphasize the importance of coherent K through 12 alignment.
As students who meet expectations in the elementary grades may face increasingly rigorous language demands in middle and high school, where proficiency targets become more difficult to attain without sustained, coordinated support across grade levels. Next slide
please. I will now turn it over to Miss Padilla. In contrast to the previous slide which showed student growth to target, this slide shows exit rates for students reaching English proficiency over the past four
years. Elementary exit rates remain the highest, while middle and high school rates are lower but improving exit rates increased slightly in 20 2425, particularly at the secondary level. The tables also show the number of
students exiting each year, highlighting the scale of students transitioning out of English language development services. Next slide please. Exit rates vary significantly by grade level. The highest
exits occur in grades four and five, where many students reach proficiency. After several years of support, exit rates are lower in early grades and again in middle and high school. Overall, about 10% of students
exited the English Language Development program last school year. Next slide please. This slide shows English proficiency attainment for emergent multilingual learners who are also identified for special
education services. These students receive both language development and disability related supports to access instruction. Next slide please. I will now turn it over to Mr. Yip. Long term multilingual
learners are present beginning third grade with larger concentrations in middle and high school. Long term Emls are students who have not yet reached proficiency after multiple multiple years in the program. The number of long term emls increases in the upper elementary and secondary
grades. Secondary schools serve a particularly high concentration, reflecting students who entered later or need extended support. These data highlight the importance of targeted, targeted content interventions on a student by student basis to accelerate
progress and prevent long term designation. Next slide please. The data indicate that our work should be strengthened to support long term emls, particularly those at English Language Proficiency level three. The expectations for
students at ELP level four, which is close to exiting Eld programing, includes the use of pardon the jargon, genre specific organizational patterns, and statement of position arguments as measured by the wider framework. Students at ELP four are, are
are able to produce language orally and in writing that reflect this. Here's a concrete example. For example, a fifth grade student might be able to use a sentence such as the civil rights movement was important because leaders like Martin Luther King Jr organized peaceful protests and gave powerful speeches to challenge
unfair laws and help African Americans gain equal rights under the Constitution. This kind of academic language needs explicit language instruction by content teachers in collaboration with Eld teachers, and primarily occurs in the grade level content courses Eld
cross-functional team members, known as Cfts and director teams are engaged with supporting content teachers at the school sites, with a focus on students in these groups. Students in this group need more targeted support from content teachers, as they may
be demonstrating oral fluency, but continue to need explicit language instruction and feedback on academic language that primarily occurs in grade level content areas. Next slide please. I'll now turn it over to Miss Bohórquez. Next we will
outline our key priorities for Eld programing across M.c.p.s. Next slide please. M.c.p.s. Is strengthening tier one instruction so emergent multilingual learners can access grade level content. This work emphasizes
collaboration between content and Eld teachers to provide explicit language support within core classes. Educators are also building on students background knowledge, promoting academic discourse, and creating culturally responsive
learning environments. Next slide please. In practice, this means explicit teaching of academic language within grade level content. Teachers setting clear content and language objectives and providing
supports for access through making things comprehensible and allowing multiple ways of expressing understanding strong structures. Enabling collaboration between Eld and content teachers with shared responsibility for language
development. Students benefiting from language rich environments, structured discussion and background building. Ongoing monitoring and use of data to ensure instruction is adjusted and targeted. Support is provided
as needed. Next slide please. Can we click once more and play the video? One more time? One
more. Thank you. M.c.p.s. Is building educator capacity
through ongoing professional learning focused on effective strategies for multilingual learners. Training emphasizes integrating language development within content instruction and aligning content and language objectives. Job embedded coaching from the
central office and school based staff supports implementation, collaborative planning structures and cluster collaboration. Strengthen consistency and impact across
schools. Next slide please. Next we will highlight specialty Eld programs designed to meet the needs of specific student populations. Next slide
please. I will now turn it over to Miss Carson. Thanks. And I think this actually might be a good time to pause. There was a lot of data and a lot of charts, which I appreciate, but I do want to make sure that we have time to make sure that we have understanding and digest that before we get into programing.
So I am actually going to let my colleagues start with questions first. But the one overarching thing I'm wondering, and it's a slide number 15 really brings it to the forefront for me because we see this four year, this patterns
and trends and not in a good way in my opinion. And so my overarching wonder is then what are we doing that's new, right. If what we were doing that's not working. What are we doing that's new? But I want to go
ahead and let my colleagues start. I don't know if one of you would like to start. Going with that. Specifically, I want to talk about our cross-functional teams. And how do you see that as value added
for this year? Because we really are going over most of our data from last year. Yet. We did move to the cross-functional team this year, so if we could incorporate that along with her question. Okay.
So thank you for for all that information and so on. But I'm just going to go right to the point. How are our kids doing in ML. Are we doing better than other than other areas. Because my experience, at least in my
district, is very different in different schools. And although I appreciate this data, I have questions about how the program is implemented across our
county, across the system, and how faithful it's implemented in in an equal way per se. And this is why we have issues with some people saying, well, I want my kid to go to this school because I know they're going to cover more, and I want my child to go to this other
school because and I'm trying to understand the equity issue with ML teaching, and I have not been able to get a very clear and concise answer because they are priorities in
some schools for some principals, or they might have the expertise in some schools. But I just want to get a very clear idea of the ingredients. And my other question is for the long term ML students, if
an ML student starts in kindergarten, I have a really hard time digesting. Why is it? Why do you still have that same student as an ML student in sixth grade and seventh grade and eighth grade, and sometimes
in ninth grade? Because there is absolutely some. As a former ML student, I have to tell you there is something we're not doing because I came here, you know, when I was nine years old and I was out of ML by sixth
grade. So and that was back in in the 80s when we didn't even have a lot of all these wonderful programs. Right. And, and, and, and expertise and research and all that great stuff that we have now. So in
my head, I'm thinking, well, we should be doing so much better, but yet we're not. So please help me understand, what is it that we're missing? Thank you so much for the question and for also sharing your
experience. I think that you touched base on a key word, which is consistency. So when we're looking at programing and delivering services to our students, we have to look at the K through 12 continuum. Our goal this year and moving
forward, as presented during the Board of Education meeting that took place on February 2nd, things go hand in hand, ensuring that we have the correct number of FTEs or Eld teachers to support the needs that we see so that that
equitable and coherent development service, service delivery development can be provided to each building. As to your question reflecting and saying that some of our students are exiting in some schools and not in others. So that's a deeper dive. As you
know, with all of this, we did a lot of research based on various states, California being the number one state that exits the highest number of else per year. And in our development as presented during that board meeting as well, we determined that we needed
designated Eld services as well as integrated Eld services for our students. So moving forward, it will be a comprehensive support system that embeds professional learning supports for students in content areas. Eld designated as well as
integrated supports in order to ensure that there's consistency and we can monitor the progress as students move forward. And can you please explain what that means for Eld to be designated versus integrated? What is the difference? Sure. So when we talked about
integrated services, we can also know that as pushing services. So you will have a content or a classroom teacher or at the secondary mathematics or science social studies with the support of an Eld teacher as well. By designated I mean
support that is provided solely by the Eld teacher during a specific time of the day, set aside to develop to work on the standards for English language development. Okay, so for example, like a pullout or a designated class time for that versus I'm in social studies,
it's in English, and I also have an Eld teacher in there to support me to work through that. Right. That is correct. We know, as you know, to meet the graduation requirements, our MLS need to also attain the content credits, which is why this integrated support is
necessary so that they can work together. Language development and also content acquisition. And so let me just be frank, because all of you know, I'm like that anyway. Right. Is that new? Were we not doing that before. Like I guess I'm just I think we're all kind of
asking the same question here. And incorporating the Cfts is, I mean, what is it that we were doing before that this is what this looks like, and what is it that we're doing now that is going to be different, for which we should hope to see different results, because I'm actually also really concerned.
I mean, our elementary schools seem like they're doing well, right? Once we get the kids in the trajectory, it kind of makes sense to me that maybe in kindergarten we wouldn't have a lot of kids exiting out, but as they progress, it looks like our numbers are fairly good. But that middle school swell is
extremely concerning to me. Also, as a parent of a middle schooler, they are just dealing with so much already, and then to have it compounded in that way with language understanding, challenges, I just can imagine. And I have to wonder if that
contributes to maybe some of our behavior challenges and various things that we see at that level. And so I'm just wondering, are those kids who entered at fifth or sixth grade? Are they are they kids who, for whatever reason, the elementary
school Eld program could be maybe the school they were at, it could be whatever else was going on, just for whatever reason. It just didn't work for them. But then I need us to figure out why. So we will be able to provide additional data in regards to that question,
based on some of the internal information that we have. Some of our long term Emls have been in Eld programing for several years here in M.c.p.s. Okay. But are we are we honing in? I mean, I'm glad that we can identify the patterns, right. But that's just the very
initial step right now we have to figure out. Right. And so if that's the case, if you have some students that are starting in kindergarten or first grade, say, and in seventh grade, they're still not able to exit out, I mean, isn't that a subset of students that we need to kind of really hone in on
and figure out, okay, well, what's going on here? What kind of supports what are we missing? Right. Because it's very clear to me in your charts again, which I appreciate. Right. It's like we have this great arc up and then it just bottoms out and it's almost like there's no hope through high school. And I get concerned about even these
transfer out. Sorry. The the exit out numbers where it says grade 12. Well I presume that just means they're not in m.c.p.s anymore. That doesn't necessarily mean they have a command of English proficiency, which is what we want to see. Right. So yeah, I guess that's
what I'm really looking for here is I think it's great we can identify. Right. But that's just the flags. So then now what are we going to do to change what's been happening thus far. Also talk to the ratio of student per teacher. And specifically in that middle
school population, what is the ratio between, you know, how we have ratios for in general? I just if you can incorporate that because I didn't see that in the presentation. Short. So
we will incorporate the ratios that were proposed at the February 2nd board meeting right now, based on the report that was presented and conducted in M.C.P.S. by the Center of Applied Linguistics, the ratios range from one
teacher to 21 students to one teacher to 88 students. In middle school. That was K-12. Okay. And then I would assume it's the upper levels, because generally that's where we raise. That's what I was sizes in middle school. We have an idea
what the ratio is. And in high school what is the ratio. We will be able to disaggregate that data and provide it for you. Yes. So the Cao report did show that we had a lot of variance. We've been working over the last several years to to improve that. So it's closer
to 1 to 4044. When you say variance I apologize. Do you mean by school? So there could be one middle school that has 1 to 60 and one that has 1 to 40? Yes. It could be. Yes. And it really depends on the number of students in the school. But we have really been working over
the last couple of years to have a little more consistency with our ratios. And when we talk about the ratio, we're talking about not necessarily the number of students sitting in front of a teacher, right? We're talking about a caseload,
right? I do want to also just respond to a few of your other questions. One, the first question you asked is how are we doing? And our our data as we look at how our emls are
doing across the district, we know that it is a service group that is really struggling and that we have not served to the best of our ability at this time. They are not making the growth that we would hope to
see. That has been the case for years after the pandemic. The the performance level decreased and we have really struggled as a district to move our emls. We recognize that this is an area
of of great concern, and it is an area that we also acknowledge is not just the responsibility of the Eld teacher, it is the responsibility of all of our teachers. And and shifting that mindset has has been a challenge for us as a district.
So that is an area as we look at the work of our cross-functional team members, they're not just supporting our Eld teachers, they are supporting our general education teachers with planning, with understanding how to meet the needs of Emls
in their classrooms, and also with our professional learning as a district. You know, we have for the first time a professional learning department. And so it's not just the curriculum office or the the office that is
responsible for training through curriculum, but now we have collaboration with equity with our school side of the house, where we have decided
that we have a tier one first instruction, everybody sitting in the space together and making sure that it's an expectation that teachers are planning for students receiving services, whether they're ML services or special education services. It's an expectation
that that that is happening and it's not being left to an Eld teacher who may see the kids maybe 30 minutes, depending on on the, the the day. So we cannot just expect that one person is taking on that load.
So we are, as a district, committing to making sure that everybody is receiving the training and having the expectation to plan and deliver that model. Another thing that we've done this year, the team has worked with our principals
and our leaders around that ML growth target. You saw the the black and white chart and really understanding that every ML that walks in the door is coming with a different level of proficiency and that their
expectation for exiting is going to be different based on their level, their grade, how long they've been in, in receiving services. And so our principals and leaders are just beginning to understand, I need to set a different goal for
this student. And they are really beginning to talk through what each student needs in order to exit. And they have been doing a great job of really highlighting for our leaders what it looks like when we talk about Wida standards,
when we talk about a level four to exit a student, we are actually talking about the type of learning that students who are taking the state assessment in, in the, the regular or
literacy or math assessment, they are performing at the same level. And so that means that they need to have the same level of vocabulary, content, knowledge, and exposure. As a student who is a non ML, that's why they do so well once they exit. But it is just an eye
opening learning experience for a lot of our leaders, and it's helping to raise that level of expectation in the classroom. And so all of you know, I'm not an educator, right? I didn't grow up in academia, as many of you guys did in the education
space. So pardon my ignorance sometimes on some of these questions. But our principals and staff not receiving this training in their programs, right. Like I was trained as a lawyer, you're trained to do certain things. And yes, we need updated professional development the same way. It's
just sounds concerning to me that it sounds like this is the first time that we're really trying to providing that in this way. In when we are going through training. This is this
may be an area that is touched upon, but it may not be an area where there is a lot of deep level of understanding. And so it's our responsibility once principal or others take on that leadership role to make
sure that they are really considering this on a day to day basis, our our district is changing and they need to make sure that they are changing with with it in terms of the expectations of what's happening, that there's no
school anymore in M.C.P.S. where we don't have a large number of MLS, and everybody needs to put this as a priority. Special education student, same as a priority with their first instruction. It can't be. It's not a separate side, not a side.
Right. Just so I appreciate the the the explanation, I'm still baffled by the fact that we are in 2026, and we're talking about this topic of making sure that every special education child and every child is a
child of every adult in that building. From the moment that child gets on the bus, right to the moment that child is buying lunch with their part of the the fiber of that building. So,
you know, I was taught in the isolated way because there was like four of us who were ML and my school, not because, you know, it did not make sense to have a class. So you for that almost 50 years. Oh my God, I'm
old and and I'm just like, things have really not that gotten that great. And I just want us to get this right. I'm looking you know, it's almost 31,000 kiddos, right, that this
touches. So you're right. We there's no longer a school that is designated, you know, as an ML. Every school has special education children and has ML kids. And they should be touched the same way, with the same rigor and with the same.
There's this there's a there's a word in in Spanish. It's ganas, you know, like it's willingness. Right. It's hard to translate it, but challenging every child to be their best right without really dividing them into groups. But
that inclusivity. So when I'm looking at these numbers, can you tell me out of the 31,000 plus, how many are long term, long term ML kids out of that? Sorry, there was a lot of graphics. So I'm going to make
you guys do the math. I'm so sorry. Yeah, better you than I. Yes. But while you're doing that, the reason. And I'll tell you why I'm asking. The reason I'm asking is because I do understand that there's a lot
of young adults that come into our system with interrupted education. I get that. I think we all do. I guess my question is the long term of kids who are born here, right? And their long term. And if we know who they are and if we know where
they are, shouldn't we not be doing everything we can to ensure that that transition is made? I got to tell you, I'm going to be embarrassed for the system if you guys tell me. Well, there's a large number of
those kids who were born here. They're long term and they're still in ML in middle school or high school. Shame on us. So I want to see what we're going to be doing differently. Please tell me. I want to see a little ray of hope here. Where are we
going to be doing differently to ensure that we get this better? Because whether we like it or not, the opportunities. And this is about opportunities, folks. Opportunities get less and less and less because then even though they come out of ML
and, you know, now they're playing catch up with their peers constantly, and then you add dyslexia to it or you add, you know, another, you know, another barrier that they may have. They're they're playing double. They're trying to catch up. So I'm trying for us to
even the playing. So help me out here. So just to provide you with that number as of February 12th is 6173 long term ML. That's a big that's a big
number. So I just want to know what the plan is. And I'm sure you can even from that you can disaggregate it. And that's K through 12 or not K through 12. So we see the numbers starting in third grade currently okay. So this is just anyone that
could be from third through 12th grade to 12th grade okay okay. And I may follow up with some data requests just to break some of these down just so that we can understand a little bit more, pinpoint some things. Miss Stewart, did you have some questions? Hi. So I
want to go. I wanted to ask about universal design for learning, because a lot of what I'm hearing is a lot of what I hear from also special education and that all kids can really benefit from universal
design. And so can you talk about how you incorporate any of that into our methodology or plan to. Sure. So when we
mention a tier one instruction is really where it's at, we're being serious. Tier one instruction is a culturally, culturally responsive form of instruction to the extreme. So when we say culturally responsive instruction, teachers know who the students are, their capacities, their
abilities, they know how to get them to understand the content in lots of different ways, and they know how to get them to express the content in lots of different ways. And their understanding. Eld is very similar to that, except that the cultural distance between the teachers and the students might be, in some cases, even
greater. So they need to have even more awareness about who the student is and where they need to go. But the target is ultimately still the same. They need to get access to the grade level content, and that's really what we're trying to aim to do. It's tier one instruction for all teachers to
be able to work with Imls, no matter who the student is and their proficiency level or their backgrounds. You mentioned earlier about integration integrating the Eld student and the teacher in the
classroom, and a mix of ways to do that group activity, or maybe a pullout. And do you track? For students like what is the mix a student is getting?
And is there a way to then say, okay, this mix of services seems to really elevate a student through the levels, and therefore can we use that integration more broadly if it's being successful? I guess
I'm trying to. Again, what we're getting at is what are we doing different? Are we learning and what's the plan to grow our capacity. Absolutely. So something that we present well that was presented based on the staffing standards workgroups and that we
recommended based on the ratio that was also presented, is that we would like the integrated courses to not exceed 50% of ML enrollment, so that there is a good ratio between ML and non ML. Of course, that is when feasible,
because as you know, we may have buildings that may have more than 50% ML as a capacity. So we will have to look at that closely. But that would be the recommendation moving forward for integrated settings. And when you talk about the the
teacher training and how that is going, I don't know if you have any idea about what percentage of teachers do you think have actually received the kind of training that they need to actually have this
integrated approach in their classroom? That's something to investigate, is how many teachers received certification through taking an exam, such as
the Praxis, versus how many educators came to us with their certification from a program that specialized in something, such as teach Tesol. I think that would be good information to get. So then we know where
where are we starting at and where do we want to be, right? Not just with results from our students, but also so our teachers are prepared to get our kids to that result. And in addition to that, we have been holding Eld listening sessions
over the the past few weeks, and we have a couple more in addition to elementary, middle and high school principals as well. And one of the topics that we touched upon was the professional learning that they feel it is needed to continue to develop. You know, our
teachers, not only Eld teachers, but also classroom and content teachers as well. Okay. Thank you. Can I just follow up on that? Are they any require trainings that our staff has to
do currently now that they have an option. But that is required. No, we don't have any required Eld training for all staff.
Tier one training. No. We have decided that we are going to do summer training for all staff coming up this summer with Eld and special education services
at the forefront, so we'll be rolling out training for teachers focused on something that we have used for years. But we're elevating again, which is the skillful teacher components, and we are going to
make sure that our ML and special education service models are are elevated in those trainings for all of our staff this summer, is that required? That will be required one tier one training. And that's going to be offered this
summer that yes, for our teaching staff. Correct. What about for other staff? Central office Paraeducators.
Principals. So we're going to start with start with Central Office. We're actually starting before the summer to make sure that they are equipped to support schools throughout the summer and beyond. So we're starting with them. And then
we'll also focus on our principals. We want to make sure that they have that background and training. Then we'll do the teachers this summer. We will have to. I'm not certain about when Paraeducators will be trained
because of the mandatory component, so I will I can get back to you on that. But but our our goal is for everyone to be trained using that skillful teacher model and have MLS and special education as the as the
focus. Okay. Thank you. Because I know Decatur's asked for training, which is amazing, which is great, but I'm concerned that we only if we only train one side of you know, but we don't train from the top
down. Sometimes priorities come from the top, not from the middle. So I just want to make sure that and we also have a lot of new principals to to the to the system. And like you said, we're no longer have
schools that you know, are ML like all schools have ML students. So. Thank you. So so again to to my question of how are we doing today. Like today
we if you were to say to me, maybe miss, Miss Bohórquez can can answer some of this with our with our international students, I want to know how they're doing today and what is it that we need to do to support them, whether it's staff, whether it's training,
it might be something simple that we have not thought about. I just want to know, how are kids doing in this environment? That is a very negative environment, to be an immigrant, to be Latino is not the most
welcoming thing. And our kids are feeling it not only personally in a sense, but they're seeing their own family members being harassed, being asked for papers, being stopped. Some of their friends parents
are being deported. They're feeling it. So I want to know, how are we doing today? So I can definitely speak to our newcomers, our students who are new to the country within the
last two years, of which 86% do qualify for Eld services. And the best way I can respond to that question is just really having wraparound services. It's not just about instruction, which of course is critical for
supporting this population. But to your point about all the additional challenges around immigration, having the Etsy team support them on a wellbeing, social emotional level, having the resources and
the connections to the community with our community partners so that we're able to support them with basic needs and with any immigration challenges. Supporting the schools, making sure that they're in the know of what they need to provide to support
this population. So definitely does require a well-rounded and a village just to to quote that saying. But it really matters to have the schools, central office teams and the community,
the counselors, all of our central office team supporting this population. But yes, we're facing pretty severe challenges right now. We heard about a student just this morning whose parents are being deported, and so we deployed some support there, and we'll connect them
to the community for that as well. And I appreciate all the work that you do, your department and all the teachers who really care every day for, for, you know, but that also has a big impact emotionally on
our staff. And I also think it's important to ensure that our staff has that moral support. Your team and others who work day by day and make no mistake that a child who who's lost a parent or both parents,
they are going to have a hard time learning folks they're not going to be they're not going to be totally there to be able to complete their work, because they're probably going to have to get a job themselves if they're at that age of being able to work and help the
family pay the bills. So all this compact of issues have an impact on on our children and the learning that they, they, they do. So I just want to make sure that, you know, we're talking about education and learning and math and testing
and, and, and all these things. But there is this all this whole other component that is rocking the lives of thousands of our children and not just our ML children, our children in general, who have friends, you know, our children are have
friends from all over and they feel the pain. And that has an impact in the classroom. And I want to make sure that this team is able to also be strong. I want to make sure that you take care of yourselves and of your teams as well. But you
guys are kind of like the front line soldiers in a sense that people are going to look to you, right, for guidance and how to deal with every everyday issues. So I just want to commend you and thank you, because I know these are long hours for a lot
of you, and you have been doing this for a long time. So before we move on to talking about the programs, I just want to see if there's any other questions about the data charts that we have so far, or how students are identified. I have one question about identification of students, and you actually
mentioned it was perfect, teeing it up because you said about 86% of our newcomers end up qualifying for elder services. So if I'm in that 14% and maybe I come in and I'm like, nope, I got it. I'm English proficient. And then as I'm going through, maybe I'm now getting into middle school
and English language arts gets a little more complex and a little more nuanced. Is there any mechanism for identifying a student that might need a touch up or a refresh? Or maybe, you know, I know some students who
maybe they did get English language development services in another country, because maybe their family has a job where they're traveling to different countries. Right. So I'm just wondering, how do we check in with students? Maybe they exited the program already, but do we check in with them later? Or students who maybe
came in from somewhere else where they spoke another country, or they spoke another language initially and then, but they do speak English. And maybe as they advance throughout their studies, they may be in need of a little bit of support, because, again, the English language just gets a
little more complex and nuanced. Sure. Sorry. Let me add one more thing. Or perhaps they think they don't need support, but maybe there's a teacher that's like, maybe they could use a little support. So as it pertains to the identification
of students, I believe, you know, that students have to complete the home language survey during enrollment. And based on the responses to those questions, we then flag them for actual screening. But that's only if they are literally have an address that is not right. What if I was?
All students who enroll have to answer the home language survey? I don't recall that myself. I'm trying to remember, but maybe that's part of the enrollment process. So every single student in M.C.P.S. must. I'm recalling now because I put on there that we speak Spanish and English, and they actually tried to put my child in Spanish language automatically
without any. And I was like, no, no, no, we're good. Yeah, that happened to me and my son as well back when he was in kindergarten. But yes, every student who enrolls in M.c.p.s has to respond to the home language survey. Based on those responses, we screen them with the screener and based on how
they score, we admit them into Eld programing or they don't qualify because their English is high enough. So for students who don't qualify because they tested strongly initially, those students are just admitted as non emls and they
have access to the regular programing. But for students who come in higher than, there's a level of monitoring and support that we give them. So just to add to that, so every single student in M.c.p.s, we progress monitor how they're performing in academics,
whether it is Ela, math, social studies, Eld, if they are identified as an emergent multilingual learner, so that data will be collected to ensure that it supports necessary for whether it is the student or classroom teacher or collaboration from department
social workers, school. The school teams are all integrated to support that particular student. But how do we know? What if we have a student who is not flagged as needing Eld support services? Right. They filled it out. Maybe they came here and, you know, fourth, fifth, sixth grade, they
they're from somewhere else. Maybe they had a language that was not English as their first language, but they speak English and they're in their, you know, class. They're getting a c-plus. And so for our school we would be like, well, they're hitting their target. There probably wouldn't
be a flag for a parent or anything like that, because that's considered a passing grade, not in my home but in, in m.c.p.s. And so but how do we know that that student might not be able to get a B+ or an A? And maybe they're having some struggles, but it's not
recognized in that way because we think that, well, they scored high enough on the or scored low enough, I guess, on the home language survey. Right. But maybe they are struggling in part because the English language is getting more complex and nuanced, and they didn't get support in that way.
They got it when they were in kindergarten and first grade for kindergarten and first grade level. You kind of get where I'm going with this. And so I just get concerned about and this goes back to the training, right, of making sure our general education staff are trained to be able to issue
spot, as we call it, in law school. Right. If you can just identify the issues, then you can try to get some support there. But are we making, you know, what about all the students already? Because our staff have not received that training or maybe some have, some haven't. Right. It's piecemeal. So I guess, you know,
I can appreciate that. Maybe we weren't. We have so many challenges and barriers to address that. That might not have been when we've looked at now, but I just want to kind of put that on your radar as to that. There may be students and they may not even be Spanish first language students or
first language students. It might be European languages, it might be Asian language. I mean, just to really be mindful that we have so many students who speak so many different languages and so many different spaces. And so to really make sure that our staff can, you
know, flag that. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I can just just respond that that does kind of take take the student out of the ML world and really is the expectation of schools to
monitor students, all students, and make sure that there is a plan for them to be proficient. One of the things that I know, Doctor Taylor really wants to make sure we are doing now and into the future is having a
very strong communication system with our families about how students are doing, even through secondary, because we tend to do that more at the elementary level. And yes, we do, but particularly in math
and literacy. But I think he's he's thinking of the core four that we are communicating with our families and coming up with a mechanism so that they clearly understand where the child is performing. Sometimes we get into a lot of education jargon, and or the graphs are a little bit more complicated to
understand. And so we are working through with some other offices how we can clearly communicate with families, progress, what we are doing on our end, and then also what parents providing them with
some things that tools and resources that they exactly where I was going to go next. Yes. So that's what we're working on for next school year, but we're designing that with shared accountability and with our equity team, and also working with some of our
community members to get feedback on language. Does this, does this resonate with you? Does this make sense? And those types of things. So that is a work in progress. Thank you. So if there's no other questions on those points very quickly,
the vetting of international students or students who come in are still before you could go to to your high school and, and sign up. And the vetting was done at the high school. Do
you mean the enrollment? Yeah. The enrollment. Yes. Yes. That is done specifically now in your shop. So newly arrived students to the country have been coming through our office for years, and they continue to do so. You might be thinking of transfer students coming in
from other counties and. Yes. And states. Yes. So that's an interesting and we're excited about an upgrade we're making for next year, where we will be enrolling transfers directly through our office instead of having them go to schools. And that way we can wrap around
them and really give them all the services that our international students receive. I really appreciate that change, because I think that's where we also lose some of our kids in that process, because with all good intentions, I don't think some of our schools are equipped to do that kind of
vetting. And then we lose kids in that process. So there are going to be going through you guys and then you'll be doing the support. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. And is that where. Oh I just wanted to clarify that. Yes. That will be for grades one through 12 not for kindergarten okay. Next year
okay. Let me just throw a whole nother factor in this because this is how we do it here in this committee. So we have students who come in and they might need English language development support. Do they also would that also be the
space where they might get identified as gifted and talented or things of that nature? Right. I know we kind of talk about these things here in the committee as this one, as if someone couldn't be all the different special populations and gifted and talented or and, and so I just
want to make sure when I was in college, I tutored elementary school children and they were children. Then they called it English as a second language, who spoke English as a second language, Spanish and Russian. And their teachers thought that these three young girls were not that smart, and it's
because they couldn't read the directions for the math problem. And I think about them all the time because they were brilliant children. And once they learned how to read English, then they showed everyone their brilliance because they can't read the read the math word problem if they can't read English. And so
I think about them a lot, and I just want to make sure that we are not limiting the opportunities that are being made available to all of our children who speak different languages, who, quite frankly, may be far more qualified for some of these opportunities
than many of us who maybe don't speak that many languages. Right. So I just want to make sure that we're not just so hyper focused on, well, they need this, they need this, that we're not looking for all the other supports they may need and their families. I had never heard of Gifted and Talented, and I spoke English since I was
a child. Right. So even without that barrier, there are things that some parents don't know about. So I just want to make sure that we're finding a way and we can maybe have some conversation offline. Margarita, about talking about, you know, integrating that into the international center, but also into any other ways that our
students come to our system. Thank you. And if you want to go ahead and proceed with programs, just wanted to touch on the point that you brought up regarding the accelerated and enriched instructions. So over the past year, our office has collaborated with the with the EEI team to think about what opportunities within the
current system that exists for the identification of gifted and talented. What can we do to ensure that our Emls are receiving equal access? What additional data points can be looked at, and how can we assess the current system so that a student is being looked
at as the whole child? So I nothing is finalized or concrete, but I just wanted to indicate that those conversations have have been occurring. Thank you. And I appreciate that. That way. The community also understands that we are thinking about these things. We are trying to work on these things even if we
can't see them concretely right now. Thank you. Okay, so as Margarita mentioned, we are going to highlight some of our specialty programs designed to meet the needs of specific student populations. M.C.P.S. two way immersion program is grounded in research based
principles of dual language education. Our six schools implement a 50 over 50 model with content instruction delivered in both Spanish and English. Students learn together and develop bilingualism, biliteracy, and cross-cultural competence.
Let's hear the voices of two of our two way immersion educators to talk about the benefits of the program in their communities. Click please. One
more time. Rolling Harris for 16 years as an Eld teacher, a reading intervention teacher, and a dual language coach. I
think the dual language program here is so beneficial for all our students. The students that speak Spanish at home, as well as the students that speak English or other languages at home. When they graduate from our school in fifth grade, they are bilingual and biliterate.
They can speak, read and write in English and in Spanish. This is such a gift to them. It will support them throughout their academic career and their future as adults. Whatever they decide to do, it will give them professional, social and
cultural opportunities they wouldn't have in a monolingual program. ASI es una de las razones porque el programa de lenguaje es tan importante para nuestra comunidad. Now we'll
hear from the reading specialist at Washington Grove. I think you have to click and
yeah thank you. And click on her face. The one on the right.
We'll give it like okay. That's okay. Well we can work on that. Let me just ask a quick question. I'm very familiar with Rolling Tears. My children started their M.C.P.S. journey at Rolling Terrace. I know then one of the challenges that some
families were having is that especially in that area, we had a very large Amharic speaking community. And so then you had children who were learning English, Spanish and Amharic, and it was a lot for them, am I correct? I believe now families
can try to ask for a Cosa to go to a different school in case that's a that's a challenge that might be too unapproachable for them. Is that correct? A family can identify beginning in second, third, fourth or fifth grade,
and we see some of our most successful, actually trilingual students are those that enter the program in kindergarten and first grade with a language like Amharic. But yes, that's correct. Families can request for a unique hardship. Cosa
okay. Thank you. Hi, my name is Laura Hahn, and I'm the reading specialist at Washington Grove Elementary School. I've been the reading specialist here since 2014, so I have experience working with our school as both a monolingual school and as a dual language
school. Since becoming a dual language school, I have seen our school community come alive. Many families feel more comfortable volunteering and engaging in school activities. Many of our students thrive when given the opportunity to embrace their home language, or learn a second or even third language, like some of our
students are doing. It's so rewarding to see students make cross-linguistic connections to support their learning and grow as multilingual learners. Supporting Biliteracy development honors students linguistic and cultural identities, which in turn promotes equity and access in a way that monolingual schools
cannot. I'm honored to work with such a diverse staff who make learning in two languages meaningful and fun for our students and families. Thank you to Susanne and Laura for
sharing their voices with us. Thanks. It's slide 26 that
we're on. Thank you. Here we see data reflecting the biliteracy of current third graders across all six two way immersion schools. These students have been in the
program since kindergarten, and we are looking at their progress as measured by Dibels and Lectura. More than half of current third grade Emls moved out of the at risk status in
both English and Spanish between kindergarten and second grade. Three quarters of the current third grade Emls who have been in programs since kindergarten, exited at risk in either English or Spanish. This
means that the students went from performing well below grade level in one or both languages, to slightly below on grade level or above grade level. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of two way immersion in
promoting bilingualism, literacy, and academic success. Next slide please. I will now turn it over to Mr. Yip. The students with limited interrupted formal education
program is also aligned to the wider framework highlighted by the Big four for big ideas at the top right. In order to attain equity for students with limited or interrupted formal education, SLI programing aims to get students operating at less than two years of their current grade level in math and
literacy. Within 20 academic months, students can be identified for Slife upon enrolling in M.C.P.S. at the international office or once enrolled at their school in collaboration with Division of Multilingual Education. The criteria are as follows. They are an active ML performing at
LP 1 or 2. They have a documented two plus consecutive years of interrupted schooling before enrolling in US schools. They are also screened for math and literacy and have a two plus year grade level below academic need that has been documented by the screener.
Slife enrollment has seen a significant decrease over the years. Across all grade levels, 469 total in years 22 to 23, down to 140 in years 2526. This can be partly attributed to the tightening of the identification process,
curricular alignments and exits, but mostly it's in proportion to the significant drop in students arriving via the international office as newcomers with complicated educational histories. Details can be found in the addendum, but there is a profound dropout
drop rate in our older high school students. Enrollment in Slife programing. Programing is done through a functional academic lens in three through 12 environments using intensive, culturally and linguistically responsive content instruction that uses what the students do have to bridge to the grade
level targets. Let's see some specifics of the how. Next slide please. Here's what the slide program looks like at a glance, as aligned to the four big ideas. In terms of equity.
Grades six through 12, students are enrolled at one of the 22 Slife sites across the county and are provided specialized slife coursework in literacy and or math, depending on need. 35 students enroll at their home school site and get supported there with classroom teachers, Eld teachers, and
content intervention teachers working in collaboration with Slife coaches. Integration certified math teachers in grades six through 12, and classroom teachers in grades three through five give students access to priority math standards so they can connect to what is going on at
the grade level as soon as possible. Grades six through 12 teachers bridge home language literacy skills to English or develop first time English literacy skills in grades three through five. Classroom teachers and or literacy teachers develop English literacy in collaboration with
Eld teachers. Collaboration in grades three through 12. Slife programs are supported with the six Slife coaches who are central, based and distributed amongst all the different sites across the county. In conjunction with content leaders at schools, the
teachers themselves and interventionists. Eld cross-functional team members support the alignment of Slife programing into the greater Eld program at the school, under the direction of the School Director and the Eld supervisor. And then finally functional
approach. Professional learning for Slife programing is content curriculum specific, with a focus on how to transfer students skills and experiences to US mathematics and literacy classroom environments. Certified math teachers provide instruction for grades three through 12. Math and Eld teachers provide literacy
support and collaboration with content teachers. All this is so that students can see the support and grade level curriculum now, rather than seeing something separate that doesn't transfer to their other grade level content. Classrooms. Next slide please. As a program,
we continue to refine the program goals to be in closer alignment with Wida so that students can get what they need and exit the program. We will build the capacity of content teachers to support language development and language scaffolding in every setting, much similar to the way we're trying to do it. With Eld
programing, we will build the capacity of teachers to get creative and having students make sense of what's presented and also be able to express what they know without overreliance on whole scale translations of lessons for students. There's also power in seeing consistent structures
and topics with different teachers and in different environments. We will better align slife reading, intervention, core instruction, and post slife instructions so they are complementary to one another rather than being different topics and concepts of instruction. Next slide
please. Let's look at a middle school example of Slife program impacts. One eighth grader at Julius West Middle School arrived nine months ago performing at a kindergarten literacy level under Principal Craig Statons leadership and asset based instruction by the
Julius West team. She made three levels of growth three grade levels of growth in just nine months, narrowing her literacy gap from seven years to four. I'm going to ask you to show the video, please, but it requires captions be turned on and the bottom right when
you maximize the video. Standby.
My. Man. But. What? I. Was one of them in. In what? Kim. Ms.
Kim. In. In. Amazon. But. Also in. What. She has or the
history or the. And while the slide deck gets pulled back up, I do want to plug the etkes who dropped everything to pull all that wonderful language out of the student and really get her talking about her experience.
Slide 30 please. Okay, so what a successful life course model looks like is learning language and subjects. Together we're going to be expanding collaboration. Our slide coaches now work at both the
elementary and also the secondary sites middle school and high school supporting planning and instruction with the supporting the whole Eld program. The coaches are working directly with teachers and planning and modeling, as well as working with other teachers that support those
students. In addition, it means making sense and expressing in different ways. We're using visuals and hands on tools to bridge language differences between what the student already knows and brings to the table, to what's going on in the US classroom. We're also
connecting to big ideas for academic contents, filling in skill gaps while maintaining access to grade level concepts so the student doesn't get yet fall further and further behind, and then finally focusing on the whole child, not just the label. Teachers need to be able to unpack the full academic
history of a student, consider their language, domains of strength, their content, areas of strength in their first and home languages and cultures, and recognize that they are more than just a level one Slife student. Now, finally, let's hear from the actual classroom teacher, Miss Min Kim,
the student's current teacher, speak about the Slife coursework this year. Please maximize that second video. Thank you. Student M started as a seventh grader in late December of 2025. It wasn't until May of the following year that she was identified as a Slife student, a student with
interrupted education. This followed many months of struggling through her classes and really not making the growth as an English learner that's new to our country. In eighth grade, we are able to start together as a in the reading class and the first
administration of the map bar, she scored 183, which is not terribly bad for a student who has just came into the United States. And then in the winter administration, she scored a 211. She was super excited when she came to me after the testing day and told me that she had increased by 28 points.
She has been a student. That is a a joy to work with. She is a hard worker. She and I have a great relationship and it shows when she comes in. She's excited to learn and do the work that we have each day, and I think the growth really points to and speaks to how
when everything comes together, when the proper instruction, the relationship is there and the proper hard working student come together, what can happen? We're super proud of Super Student M, and we look forward to seeing more growth in her and seeing more growth in all
of our students as we give them the proper instruction and make the relationships with them. Thank you. Next slide please. And I'll now turn things over to Miss Bohórquez. Thank you
Daniel. Last but not least, in addition to the academic programing previously presented, I will now highlight one of the ways in which we support student well-being. A cornerstone of our student support framework is our distinguished team of 22 ML therapeutic counselors, or etc.
their primary mission is to cultivate psychological safety as necessary for academic engagement. Itcs provide specialized, trauma responsive interventions directly within school communities. Additionally, the team meets with every ML student at
enrollment to conduct a well-being check that helps us identify any challenges that must be addressed by the student's school counselor and or referred to a community partner. Let's hear from a middle school ML student and an ML graduate who share how
invaluable their support has been for their well-being and their academic success. Miss Lee worked with me so many times when I was at sixth and seventh grade. She helped me when I was having a harde
with my friends, and she came to have a meeting with me and my friends to solve that conflict between us. Something that I learned that in miss Lee groups, that I can speak up for myself and I can help other
people, not only me and I can not have fear to speak up and like help others pass through that because I already passed
that. Thank you. Yes, please. Thank you. This is. Hello, my name is Tina Zacarias. I am originally from Eritrea and I
came to the US 2021 and it's been four years since I got here. Also, I am a freshman in college. I go to Umbc. I started as a freshman in high school at Bethesda-chevy Chase High School, B-cc and Miss Nazareth was my counselor. I
would call her and she was always there whenever I needed her. And I was always whenever I had a question, whenever I needed something, I just had to ask or email. And she would always respond. And also at that, like whenever I needed guidance, she was the one to
like, guide me through everything. And it was such a good experience for me because she made me feel so comfortable to text her anytime to email or anything. And also like it's just it just felt like home because she's really warm,
welcoming and all that. And not only will this school, she really helped me through my mental health and all of the things I needed in school as a new student or as an immigrant student that doesn't really know anything about the US. And honestly, it's really something
that I would recommend everybody to do it to, like actually ask her any question, to be able to talk to her about anything. Because like I said, she will always be there for you guys and don't feel shame,
don't feel bad, don't feel low or anything. You're literally as the same as the students in there. You just need a little help because you're new to the country and there is always, you know, there's always a first time for everything. So that's such a good experience, and it's really a good thing to
have to have her by your side, because like I said, she helps a lot and it will be a great experience for you guys for anything, college recommendations, anything, guidance, anything you guys need. Like I said, even mental health help. So I would
absolutely, absolutely recommend everyone to be able have her or to be able to talk to her. And thank you so much. I wish everybody to have a good day and bye. Next slide
please. I will now turn it over to Miss Morales. So what actions is M.c.p.s. Taking to strengthen instruction supports and systems to improve outcomes and ensure multilingual learners have full access to grade level learning. Next
slide please. We are building educator capacity to scaffold students to grade level standards. We are empowering teachers to use the Wida framework to support language development within content instruction. We are monitoring
progress in both language and content in an integrated way. We are strengthening administrative capacity to support collaboration. We are aligning staffing models to ensure grade level access with dedicated language development time across kindergarten
through 12th grade. Next slide please. Thank you for your engagement. We welcome your questions, comments and feedback, and we look forward to continuing this work in partnership to support our emergent multilingual learners, educators, families, and
communities. Thank you so much. And just to for everyone's awareness, there is an addendum containing just a little bit of information specific to some questions that I had asked, and then also just fleshing out what some of these things mean, like parent notification letter,
for example, some key words and phrases. So I just I appreciate that information there for everyone, whether it's the community or my colleagues, I do have some data requests, but I want to go ahead and give my colleagues a chance to ask any questions based on what you
presented. And then I think at the end, we'll just go ahead and do some data requests so that my staff can also record that as well. So, Miss Rivera-Oven, yes, if we could talk a little bit about the the students with interrupted formal education for a little bit, I think that was, oh, the
number on my page. But thank you. Thank you so much for for bringing that to our attention. This is this is a this is one of those groups of young people that keeps me up at night. I'll tell you why. Because I see
them dropping out of school quite often. Not because they don't want to be in school. It's because. We're asking them to do so much, literally, to catch up a whole whole life of
of education, because of all the standardized testing and everything that we do. And that's really impossible. So they sit there. And if you were to ask principals like I do, I think this is one of their
biggest pains, especially for high school principals, because there's really not much more they can do for for these young people. And this is why I am so big in alternative programs. Whether we can get them into a GED program early on, or we can
get them into a program where they can learn a trade and be part of that because we lose them without them getting even a high school diploma. And then if you want to go back and get
a GED. It's costly. So that's why I wanted to a little bit more information about this group. There's really no data that you gave me or that you gave us on this population. I don't know how long the program has been in existence, but I
really would like to have a better idea how many young people were dealing with. Some of them have more than two years of interrupted education, and they come in, you know, they come in. It's rare that, you see, I think an interrupted
education child in elementary school. But we see that from other countries. That's no longer rare. It used to be not, not, not any longer. So when I was watching the video, the teacher said something
interesting that it took from September to May to get her identify right. This is I unfortunately, this is not unusual because I see this not just with this population. I see with our IEP populations to
our special education, where you have a child who probably did not come through us through kindergarten or pre-K, they come in in second, third grade. They have not been assessed or vetted. Right. And it takes it takes a while. So in this
situation, the same thing. So what I'm looking for is a couple of things I'm trying to understand better who these kids are geographically, where they are, and whether or not we can reassess what we're doing
with this population. Although I really applaud M.C.P.S. support with the with the program. Is that enough? Or can we look at a program like when
they're about to turn 17 or 18, like a program? That's what I'm wondering as well, right. Is there an insert point at which we say, okay, wait a minute, we need to provide some additional kind of tangential support, right. Career readiness in a
different way to that group, because we have that exit group of grade 12 where we're like, well, they're exiting because they're just not here with us anymore. It does not because the program worked for them or that they're going on to greener pastures necessarily. It's just that they're done here. And and I know trust me,
it's not it's not lost on me that we're we're county. We don't like to have these kind of programs or we're night school programs. Why do we need night school programs? Because we have populations of young people who might need it. And I'd rather have a group of
young people who are prepared with a high school diploma and a trade that they can use for life, than having exit or systems without even a high school diploma, because I think long term, whether you look at
it as whatever you want to look at it economic wise, it's not good for the economy, you know, so whatever you want to look at it. Right. So this is one of those pain points that I really want us to look at as a system
and just come to a realization that, you know, we might just be putting a little bandaid on something that is much bigger than, than just a little cut. And if that's the case, because we are we're putting money into this program, correct? We have a funding set aside and so on.
Is there something else that we can do to make the outcomes better? So if you can provide us with some data on this population where they are, how long they've been with us, you know, the cluster per cluster
and so on, where some of these students are landing and so on. Because I can tell you from talking to principals, this is one of those things that principals will bring, bring up and say, we don't think we're doing the best for these kids. And it pains me. We're not
educators, but those who are and whose mission is to teach, right? I know this is a painful thing on their side. It pains them that they're not able to give their best to these students. And it's not maybe because they don't want to.
It's because maybe we just don't have what they need in some of our schools. So we're trying. But I guess my question is, is trying enough, right. It's goodwill enough, or do we want to see positive results
for these young people who are not going to be young forever? They're going to be young adults. They're going to form families to give them the skills that they're going to be able to have and use long term. So I want us to see the long term investment, I guess, is
what I want to say, so we can get more information on that population. I would really appreciate it. And to the folks who are these incredible counselors, ATC counselors, I know that they're under
Margarita Bohórquez shop. I have met quite a few of them. What an incredible group of human beings. Because a lot of these children and young adults have, and they come with some
heavy duty trauma that none of us would like to imagine ever going through, or having any of our loved ones go through. And yet they deal with it every day. They're there every day, making sure that young people, like the ones we saw in the video,
have a chance to be able to achieve, which is, you know, the most wonderful thing that we can give our children and education. And also just, you know, to my colleagues, what a wonderful county that we live in, that we're able to have
this incredible group of young people from all over the world. It warms my heart that we are able to work with them and to open our hearts and our arms and hug them and say, welcome, and you are going to be safe and loved in our community. And
that's what M.C.P.S. stands for me, and I know stands for you. Thank you. Thank you so much for this comprehensive packet and I really enjoyed the videos.
I would like to know more about, again, the cross-functional teams and how you are interacting. I know I got the chart here in the slife part of the presentation, but what what other kind of work are you
doing with schools? Sure. Thanks for the question. The Cfts have been phenomenal as a boon to providing us with the opportunity to connect with schools directly, both for getting US data about what's actually going on in school
sites and also providing sort of that more micro level at the school sites. So before, whenever we ran a training, you'd go to the teachers may or may not be continued to follow through back at the school site, but because we have the CFT now which are being directed by the directors for the schools,
they're incorporated as part of a greater program for the team. Our CFT has been focused predominantly on the CIP goals for the schools, the school improvement plans, and a lot of those school improvement plans because of the peel that our office was helping to coordinate with director teams
around making sure that the leaders understand. Here's why you're losing points on the Maryland State report card. It's actually the access and actually outside of the access assessment that you're losing a lot of points. And conversation came up around long term MLS. Like, what does it mean to actually have a long term ML in
a school building? Why do I keep on losing points with these same kids? Here's what's going on. So each of these 13 Cfts were actually able to join the instructional leadership teams, sit down with admin to say, here's what's going on with your particular school now, because they're all cluster
specific. Some of this learning has happened at the cluster level. Some of it has happened at just at the admin teacher teams. But the Cfts have done a great job at sort of, no pun intended, translating what's actually going on with the Maryland State report card and looking at a content by content
basis for each school site. So I would love to say that everyone is using the same approach, but what is consistent is that everyone is using the same lens to say, here's what you're losing points on the Maryland State report card in regards to MLS, and here's something concrete that you could add to your
school improvement plan to do something about it. So now the leaders, which is a big change, have a extra emphasis and focus on the MLS in their building. And they know exactly who those students are and what they need. And what they need may actually be outside of the Eld courses
and may actually be in the content courses. So the LTC teams have actually been supporting other content areas as well, to try to train up those teachers so they know how to work with the MLS in every content context in the entire building. I was hoping that you were going to say something
that you said, that you're going into schools and looking at these long term eld in each school. I am picturing a list of students and going in and going in and saying, hey, we need a plan for these students.
Maybe it's not like an IEP, but it is some kind of learning plan. And then I would assume you would then go check back and see if are those that list of students still long term, and where has the growth been. And if you see there's not been
growth, go over some kind of strategies you can do. So that is really important work because it's on the ground in the school work. And if we're not doing that kid by kid, I don't think we're going to see the kind of growth we need to
see. And it's a lot. But am I assuming did I kind of describe that correctly or. Okay, great. Thank you so much. And I'm looking forward to see going over this year and see how that worked, because we are
investing in these teams and we really do want to see results. Thanks. Just before I make some data requests, I just want to kind of piggyback on something that Miss Stewart said, right. When our students have
challenges, which sometimes people phrase as disabilities, they get a plan, right. It might be a 504 plan. It might be an individualized education plan. Is there an Eld plan like is that a thing. So each so each one of these almost 30,000
students then has their own, I don't want to call it an individualized plan because we use that vernacular for something else. But I mean, it's basically akin. Is that right? So yes. So in Maryland we do have an ML plan, but it's
just for accommodations when it comes to state testing and for instruction. Okay. But it's can you elaborate. Yeah a little bit more on that. So correct. So moving forward we would like to design a more strategic plan
per student. So we're in the infancy stages right now with the CFT. Members of developing individualized support for whether students are looking at the domain specific needs of students in content areas, and also if they qualify for
designated support as well. But it's not as an IEP right now. That's not what it looks like. So but we are working just internally on our own because it's the right thing to do. We're working on enhancing what that plan looks like so that it has some domain specific goals
and things. So again this is not an IEP under the law. That's not what we're talking about here. Just so everyone's clear. And so everyone knows I'm clear. But we're just talking about something that we've decided as a school system would help our students to be on track and help our staff to keep them on track and
moving forward. We would like to strengthen the system so it becomes something that is part of our fabric moving forward to support our Imls. Yes. And Catherine, correct me if I'm wrong. California has. Already
developed this a plan. I will have to look into the ML plan for California. They have the highest number of MLS and also the highest number of students exiting Eld services, together with New York, Texas and a
couple of other states. Again, states adopt laws for their particular state depending on the needs that they see. So, for example, Florida, all teachers are duly endorsed to support ML. Correct? So correct. Because I think in California
they do have something. It's not like it's it's similar to an IEP, but it's for for for an ML learner to be able to guide that's you know, it's like kind of like a guidance that is good for the parents. So you always know where your child is at or
where the weaknesses are. So you can focus at home so you can do vocabulary and all that stuff, which I think is amazing. And it's a guidance for the system to see also where that child might need support. And I think it's Orange County, don't
quote me, but if you look into the Orange County, how they do it in San Francisco has one in for the Chinese immigrant population, because they also have a dual program, that is, they they follow each child.
Each child has like their own plan in a sense, that has the additional of information about that. That child might be special education as well. So they might have to make accommodations in Chinese for that child to take the test.
But it's all very much together. It's not like a separate thing. And I'm hoping that with the diversity that we have in Montgomery County, with the many students that we have, that we can start coming to
doing something similar like we see in other in other areas. Yeah. And I will just say, I know certainly schools are expected to have ML plans for any any student who is ML has to have a plan. What I think we
can do much better job with is integrating that plan with their classroom teacher and ensuring that they are very familiar with. Again, I think it all coincides with the the growth targets. What are the
specific goals and skills that we're going to have so that the two are very familiar with the expectations? So that is something we can certainly improve upon, right. It's not just by chance, but it's deliberate, correct, to say, yeah, we agree. That's that's awesome. That's music to our
ears in this committee. Yes. Okay. Well thank you very much. I just want to make some data requests really quickly and then we'll let everyone get on with their day. We have another hearing this evening. I know that we're really interested in the long term ML students. And
so if we could get that data and this is referencing slide 18 by grade and cluster. So we can see if there are any geographic challenges as well. On slide 14 we were looking at
the fiscal year 25 ESA growth categorized as met and not met. I'm interested in those students in sixth through 12th grade who have not met by school and grade. So school a
sixth grade this many not met. School a seventh grade this meeting not met and I think we can cluster them when we get the school. So we don't need to do cluster. Slide 16 is looking at exit non exit for access and
alt. I would like to also see grades six through 12th by grade in school again. And I apologize I don't have the slide but it was the two way immersion portion. I'd like to know if we have M cap data for
grades three through five by two way immersion school. Broken down by grade, and then, and perhaps this isn't a clear data request, I know, but maybe you can just kind of think
about if there's something that you could provide for u better understand. I think that one thing that I know Miss Stewart and myself are interested in is looking at the approach that's taken to support. So our students, for example, who are getting pulled
out doing better than students who are maybe just in a big group or where it's just integrated but not, you know, just the different variations. Right. Let's control for all the variables here and see, are there any patterns that we're seeing. And if my colleagues don't have any additional data
requests, or if Miss Farber doesn't have anything additional she think we should request? Okay, then I would just like to thank everyone for being here today. All of the M.C.P.S. staff that are here at the table and in the audience, as well as my own board staff here that are always here to
support us. You've provided us with a really great deal of information on this really important work that all of you are doing, and I know it's not in isolation. There are many people who are not here today who also contribute to this work, and I appreciate that. So we just want to thank everyone for listening and watching and for all of your hard work, and
we will see you next time. Thank you, thank you.