ELAC Board Members and General Meeting Summary

October 9, 2014

Soleado Parents:

I would like to thank all of the parents that were involved in the voting process to elect our English Learner Advisory Committee Board Members for the 2014-2015 school year.

Our elected representatives are:

Mitsue Shioda, Akane Oiwa, Maria Yoojung Kim, Wendy Ser, Kimberly Ryan, and Gina Stutzel

The ELAC Board will be meeting 4 times this year to discuss the English language student program offered at Soleado. The purpose of the ELAC Board is to guide the English language program, have an on-going responsibility to review the program implementation, and annually review the components of the Site Plan and School Improvement Plan that pertain to English learners. 

Summary of our ELAC General Meeting held on September 29

In our annual ELAC General Meeting, we discussed the components of our program which includes the "Pull Out" and "Push In" model of instruction. Our ELD instructors, Mrs. Ryan and Mrs. Ser, will share the responsibility of both methods. Beginning level learners will get extra instruction with Mrs. Ryan using the "Pull Out" method. Mrs. Ryan and Mrs. Ser will also be supporting the students in the classroom during instruction and independent work. 

We are working with the same budget that we had last year. We are paying for 2 teachers which will provide more coverage in the classroom then we had in previous school years. We are offering an ELL Homework Club for 3-5 grades this year. Last year, we had more intervention money through a different fund which gave us the opportunity to have a 1^st-5^th grade Homework Club. We do not have those funds this year, so we will continue to provide the 3-5^th grade program which is covered in our ELL site budget.   But again, we have a more robust program during the school day because we now have 2 instructors instead of only one instructor like in previous years. 

The ELAC committee will be discussing the SBAC assessment this year and what accommodations will be made for the ELL students during the test. We will keep the community updated with testing information as it is being shared with us. Mrs. Ryan provided the parents with strategies to help with English learning at home. We also talked about instructional technologies and how they played a role in language acquisition. 

All the information that was shared can be found on our Edline Website under ELL http://www.edline.net/pages/Soleado_Elementary . The teachers and I will continue to post relevant information throughout the school year to support the ELL students and their parents using our Edline site.  Please visit the site and if you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me or Mrs. Ryan at ryank@pvpusd.net and stutzelg@pvpusd.net . 

Lastly, there will be 4 DLAC meetings held at the District Office. Those dates are October 23, December 11, February 12, and April 30. Our ELAC Board meeting dates are November 18, January 20, March 24, and May TBA. Our ELAC meeting will be held at our school and is open to any community members that would like to attend.