Roseville School District Plans Elementary Spanish-English Immersion Program

A Dual Language Immersion (DLI) program opening next fall at Little Canada Elementary will be open to English and Spanish speaking students from throughout the Roseville school district.

Twenty-two Spanish-speaking kindergarten students and 22 English-speaking ones will be chosen by lottery early next year to participate in the program, which is designed to run at least through fifth grade.

“A really dramatic way to be able to increase students’ performance in English is to provide direct instruction in their home language,” said Brian Koland, the English Language coodinator for the district. “You learn to read once, and when our students learn to read in Spanish, then they break the code into English, but that initial literacy only happens once for all of us."

Native English speakers and native Spanish speakers will be grouped together for all academic instruction and, for the first year or two of the program, 90 percent of instruction will be in Spanish and 10 percent in English. (By upper elementary school, the percentages will come into balance.)

Koland said the program was designed to be no more expensive than regular classroom instruction, and may be less expensive as the district will not need to employ as many ELL (English Language Learner) teachers; general education teachers are used in the program.

The idea for the program arose, Koland said, from recommendations in a 2009 Education Planning Advisory Committee Report to look at unconventional methods of meeting student needs.

Superintendent John Thein said that with the district’s growing student population and some schools becoming crowded, the program was a good way to make Little Canada Elementary more appealing.

“Little Canada is a building that does have space right now, and it’s a way to move population from one side of the district to the other and not make it a forced move but a choice move,” he said.

To obtain more detailed information, please join DLI staff for a DLI Information Night at Little Canada Elementary School on Tuesday, November 29. Two informational programs will be offered in Spanish and English from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. and from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.