School District of Janesville
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DISTRICT PROFILE:
The School District of Janesville serves approximately 10,429 students and employs 1,400.6 full time staff (district FTE). We have 12 Elementary Schools, 3 Middle Schools, 2 High Schools and 2 Charter Schools. For 2006-2007, the district reports the following student demographic breakdowns: Race and Ethnicity: .5% American Indian, 2.1% Asian, 6.1% African American, 6.7% Hispanic, and 84.6 % White. For 2005-2006, the district reported the additional breakdowns: eligible for free or reduced-price lunch: 28.12%; and all disabilities: 16.2%. The current data shows 6.1% limited English proficient (LEP).
ELL PROGRAM STRUCTURE:
A. Elementary Schools
Elementary ELL students are served in the following neighborhood schools: Adams, Jackson, Jefferson, Kennedy, Lincoln, Madison, Monroe, Roosevelt, Washington, Wilson. PreK services are provided at ELL neighborhood sites which receive Title I funding. The specific sites may vary by year. Services for grades K-5 are located at the ten schools listed above. Students may receive ELL services through pull-out, push-in, co-teaching, or any combination thereof. At a minimum, ELLs participate in art, music, physical education with their grade-level English-speaking peers. Homeroom and grade placements are age appropriate.
B. Middle Schools—Edison, Franklin, and Marshall
Middle school ELL programs are located at each neighborhood school. Students are provided English language and literacy development instruction as appropriate for their proficiency levels. Academic content support may be provided through collaboration model pre/parallel teaching classes, co–taught academic classes and/or bilingual instructional aide support in the classroom. Content support will be provided in the native language when available. Students will be integrated into core subjects and exploratory classes for the remainder of the day.
C. High Schools—Craig and Parker
Craig and Parker Schools serve ELL students in grades 9-12. There are two distinct classes that are part of this program (Language Acquisition and Study Skills/Content Support). The Language Acquisition classes are designed to help students acquire academic and social English and are clustered by language proficiency levels. The Study Skills/Content Support classes are designed to help students in their academic content classes and are clustered by grade levels. Both of these classes are taken for credit and meet five days a week for one hour. Students are integrated into required and/or elective courses where they may receive additional ELL support. Students may be enrolled in one or both of these courses.
ELL PROGRAM HISTORY AND PROFILE:
The Program for English Language Learners (ELLs) in the School District of Janesville began in the mid-late 1970’s when refugees began arriving from Southeast Asia following the Vietnam War. Two Janesville teachers began as non-contract, hourly employees to assist these Laotian and Cambodian children and their families to adapt to their new home. Three schools in Janesville, a mid-sized district in south central Wisconsin, emerged as the “center schools” for the limited English proficient (LEP) students: Wilson Elementary School, Franklin Middle School, and Parker High School.
Almost two decades later, in the school year 1993-1994, the district’s English as a Second Language Program served 83 students K-12 with some itinerant services for elementary students electing to remain in their home schools in addition to the services at the three program sites. The program continued to grow slowly and steadily through the 1998-1999 school year.
The following fall, a significant influx of Mexican immigrant families began arriving in Janesville and the number of ELLs rose from 103 to 142 during first semester alone. For the 2000-2001 school year, a second elementary program site was added at Jefferson Elementary (Back-To-School-News, 2005). The growth continued, triggering the addition of two more elementary sites in 2003-2004 with services to 349 students from 17 home languages; 64 percent were Spanish speakers (Census of Limited-English Proficient Pupils in Wisconsin by District, March 2004).
During the spring of 2005, the district completed a transportation study which showed that ELL families lived across the entire district, rather than in certain cluster areas. To defray transportation expenses and to serve ELLs in the neighborhoods in which they lived, the district planned an expansion of ELL services to six additional elementary schools, two additional middle schools, and one additional high school effectively bringing services to all but two elementary schools and two charter schools in the district (Back to School News, 2005). The program ended the 2004-2005 school year serving 475 ELLs and, by October 2005-2006, served over 525 students from 25 home language backgrounds, 74% of which were Spanish speakers,13% Khmer (Cambodian) speakers, 3% Albanian-speaking, and 12% a composite of the remaining 22 languages (Back-to-School News, 2005 and ELL Program Listing, 2005-2006). The district currently serves approximately 640 ELLs.