CPPS to launch dual language program

By on Thursday, March 6th, 2025 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories

COLLEGE PLACE – College Place Public Schools is planning to launch a dual language program at Davis Elementary School for the 2025-26 school year, with plans to expand to program in grades K-12 in the coming years.

The program will be a Spanish-English model. It would start with 80 percent instruction in Spanish starting in kindergarten, which would then transition to a 50/50 balance by the third grade. College Place High School Principal Robert Aguilar is overseeing the program. He says the process to start this program began with a conversation with Davis’s Multilingual Specialist Meg Berg about program models for multilingual learners, and how the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) heavily suggests that districts follow a dual-language model. He says after looking into the process and the resources needed that it came together “naturally.” Multilingual learners are students who typically speak a language other than English outside of school.

The program is open to all incoming kindergarten students. Priority will be given to multilingual students, then heritage speakers, those students who don’t speak Spanish at home but are descended from a Spanish-speaking culture, and then to the rest of the students who don’t fall into the first two categories. If the demand were to exceed capacity then a lottery system would be utilized.

Multilingual students at Davis are currently in an “early-exit” K-3 model. That model is similar to the dual-language model, but the difference is that the early exit is geared more towards teaching those students English as opposed to a bilingual curriculum.

Aguilar said an advisory board was formed as part of the steps recommended by OSPI, that was represented by parents of multilingual students. He says the board was very supportive of the idea. He says that other parent organizations were also overwhelmingly supportive in their responses. This included the families of children who are native English speakers, who showed an interest in learning more about the program. Aguilar says that despite the broad interest, the initial offering to multilingual students is to make sure current staffing could meet demand.

“This program is about connection,” said Aguilar. “We’re giving students the opportunity to learn in two languages, opening doors for their futures.”