Evanston Township High School’s bilingual department presented a revised plan to the District 202 school board Monday night that laid out the path the department thinks non-native English speaking students should follow in school.
About 10 faculty members presented the Bilingual Evaluation Plan and said they hoped it would show the board how to facilitate the students’ transition to mainstream classes.
“We want to improve and enhance the limited English-proficient students,” said Kathy Pino, head of the world languages department.
Pino said the two major goals for the new bilingual program are improvement in instruction and student achievement, as well as better recording of student achievement.
“This is really a time for the staff to have the time to dream,” Superintendent Allan Alson said. “So far they are feeling really good about the opportunity.”
Beyond just helping the 52 students in the bilingual program become proficient in English, the staff members looked to other issues, such as helping these students meet graduation requirements. Although students in the program are predominantly native Spanish speakers, there is a wide range of languages, including Russian, Mandarin and Korean.
“Our students must master the English language and vocabulary and also must learn to use it in other places,” teacher Patricia Payne said. “Every lesson that we plan has both the content objective and the language objective.”
The board also discussed ETHS’s field trip policy, which was revised in response to the cancellation of a trip last spring. Main changes to the policy include the board’s ability to cancel a field trip without student reimbursement and new screening procedures for field trip volunteers.
“We tried to elaborate on the policy we had,” Assistant Superintendent Denise Martin said.
The cancellation of a Latin Club trip to Italy called attention to the need for revising the policy. The board called off the trip over concerns about how the conflict in Iraq was progressing. No refunds were issued because the trip was cancelled without sufficient notice, leaving students and parents dissatisfied.
Nearly all of the 19 original students who signed up for the Italian tour will be crossing the Atlantic in December.
The layout of the superintendent’s annual report, as well as some statistics within, also will be changed, following discussion Monday night. Several board members expressed confusion about the presentation of the report, which Alson said he would correct soon.
In other business Alson extended the board’s congratulations to 12 ETHS students who were commended at the 2003 Evanston Hispanic Youth Achievement Awards ceremony Oct. 17.
