Walker takes ELL program concerns to McLain, Groe

Last week I met with Page Unified School District superintendent Jim Walker, in addition to Superintendent Maurice Flores and Assistant Superintendent Betsy Parker from the Kingman Unified School District to listen to their concerns regarding the English Language Learner program and the costs to implement the program in their schools.

Last year the Legislature passed a bill (the Governor did not sign the bill but did allow it to go into law) that created an ELL task force, giving them instruction to create 4 ELL teaching models allowing school districts to choose the model to best fit each district in order to preserve local control. The bill also allowed the districts to design their own model and submit it for approval if preferred. Apparently the task force has designed only one model to date and this is not working. Wonder of all wonders. I appreciate the superintendents making the trip to Phoenix, coming forward and bringing this problem to my attention.

This next week I will be meeting with the House Majority Education Analyst, in addition to members of the Education Committee and representatives from the Department of Education in order to gather additional information on this issue and attempt to find out why the ELL task force did not comply with the instruction from the state legislature.