The Iowa Valley School Board, at its meeting Dec. 12, spent time discussing revisions to the district’s plan for serving English language learners.
The goal of the district’s English as a Second Language, or ESL, program, is to increase proficiency in the four core areas: listening, speaking, reading and writing. The policy states that English language learners, or ELLs, communicate for social, intercultural and instructional purposes within the school setting.
The ELL policy was adopted in 2006, and many of the revisions were related to wording and bringing the policy to current state and federal standards. State and federal law mandates that schools address the special needs of students with little or no English language knowledge. In the state of Iowa, a student is defined as “Limited English Proficient” if English is not their native language and has a limited ability to understand or speak it, and it significantly impedes the education progress.
Families are asked to complete a home language survey during egistration, and the district is prepared to conduct oral or native language interviews in the student’s home with those adults who may not have sufficient English or literacy skills to complete a survey written in English.
Following the discussion, board members voted 5-0 to approve the changes.
VIDEO AWARD
Students in the advanced-placement composition and English 9 classes were honored for winning awards in the recent Student Voice Video Contest.
The English 9 Video “Freshman Voices” placed in the top three. AP composition’s video “We Appreciate Change,” won the People’s Choice award, as well as the overall grand prize. The videos were recently posted on YouTube, at http://www.youtube.com/user/iowatransformed Board members commented that they were very proud of the students and impressed with their work.
OTHER BUSINESS
In other business, board members:
• Were informed of an outbound open-enrollment request for Talon Schneekloth, Marengo, to attend Benton Community of Van Horne starting in the 2012-13 school year.
• Approved an employment contract for John Bowlin as head varsity baseball coach at a salry of $4,126.10.
• Cast its vote for Thomas Wieseler, Mount Vernon, for a three-year term as director on the Iowa Association of School Boards.
• Approved the second reading of the board’s updated Series policies. Several related to recruitment and qualification of administrators, superintendents, licensed employees and classified workers. Other policies had to do with education policies, equal education opportunity, notice of non-discrimination-grievance procedure, equal employment opportunity and objectives for equal educational opportunities for students.
• Discussed the itinerary for the Iowa Department of Education’s Dec. 13 site visit to Iowa Valley.
The next Iowa Valley School Board meeting will be 6:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 23, in the board room at Iowa Valley Junior-Senior High School, 359 E. Hilton St.
You must log in to post a comment.