Saugus Union School District officials recently announced a dual language immersion program designed to offer students the opportunity to become biliterate in Spanish and English by sixth grade.

The local elementary school district intends to offer incoming kindergarten students the chance to enroll in a program that aspires to put them on track to become biliterate.

El programa bilingue is slated to immerse students in varying levels of español throughout their elementary school education, as studies have found young children are more able to assimilate and understand language patterns, according to Saugus Union School District (SUSD) officials.

“The goal is to not only have our students be bilingual, but be biliterate and be able to read and write in both languages,” said Assistant Superintendent Dr. Isa De Armas.

Instruction for kindergarten students in the program is slated to begin with what De Armas referred to as the “90-10 model.”

“Ninety percent of the time our students will be instructed in Spanish at the kindergarten level and 10 percent of the time in English,” said De Armas. “As they move on to first grade, they would have an 80-20 model, so that would be 80 percent of the time in Spanish and 20 percent in English, and so forth as they go on through the grades.”

Initially, the program will only be available to students at Highlands Elementary School, and students may not join the program after kindergarten, according to officials.

“The goal is by the end of the 6th grade, they will be fully biliterate in those two languages. We will begin to work with our Hart partners at William S. Hart (Union High School District) so that they have a transitional program where the kids will get their high school Spanish credit during middle school,” said Saugus Union School District Superintendent Dr. Colleen Hawkins.

In order for the program to be successful, the classes must be comprised of a balance of students who are familiar with Spanish and students who have no experience with the language, according to Hawkins.

“We want to make sure we have the appropriate balance of students whose primary language is our target language of Spanish,” said Hawkins. “It’s not just putting everybody in there and we speak Spanish to them for their first year. It’s having those models of kids who can communicate with each other in the target language as well as communicate with each other in the secondary language.”

Two recent informational meetings about the program were attended by over 200 families.

Families in attendance were asked to fill out an interest form, resulting in 80 submissions for the 50 available spaces in the program, according to district officials.

“Typically you fill two kindergarten classes, because as kids move up through the program sometimes there’s some attrition of people moving and not being able to continue in the program,” said Dr. Hawkins. “So we always start with two classes and move our way up.”

Currently, the district intends to enroll two classes in the program for the upcoming school year, but Hawkins is open to the possibility of enrolling additional students for more classes.

“We’re probably going to have to do a lottery in order to accommodate folks,” added Hawkins. “If we were to have enough to fill more classes, we would have to be able to fill four classes and have four teachers, and if we could do that, we would love to, but we don’t know yet where we’re going to be.”

For more information about the program, as well as interest forms, visit the district website here or contact Dr. Isa De Armas at idearmas@saugususd.org or by phone at (661) 294-5300.

All forms must be turned in to the district office, located at 24930 Avenue Stanford, by March 1, 2019.

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