Bedford Central committee to lay foundation for dual language improvements

By JEFF MORRIS 

After the release in May of the Center for Applied Linguistics report on the district’s Dual Language Bilingual Education program, the Board of Education was interested in following up on the recommendations made in the report.

At its meeting Sept. 23, the board heard from Adrienne Viscardi, the director of English for speakers of other languages programs, about what has been going on since.

It was clear in May that the board was interested in digging into specifics of the report in order to better understand what the study showed and how it could be used to continue improving the program.

Comprehensive evaluation

In 2025, with the first DLBE student cohort poised to graduate from Fox Lane High School, the district decided to undertake a comprehensive external program evaluation. The Center for Applied Linguistics was selected to conduct the review.

Viscardi said she and her colleagues — she singled out Mount Kisco Elementary School Principal Eleana Rojas — began following up in June by holding listening sessions with different stakeholder groups.

“One was with our families and wider community,” she said. “It was an evening meeting for anyone who wanted to come. And then we had another session with DLBE faculty.”

Viscardi said the report produced 30 recommendations, 10 that warranted immediate attention, and 20 for ongoing work. The listening session stakeholders categorized them into three buckets, for ease of conversation; the first was program structure; the second was all things teaching and learning; and the third bucket was those things that fell beyond the instructional core of DLBE or outside the classroom.

“That’s where we included family community support and resources,” Viscardi said.

She said she, Rojas, Superintendent Robert Glass, and Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum Instruction & Assessment Amy Fishkin, spent the summer sifting through all the notes that came out of the listening sessions. 

“We were looking for emergent themes and patterns and recurring questions and wonderings,” she said. They met as a core team several times since the release of the report, and also had a couple of opportunities to speak with the lead researcher from CAL, who was able to offer guidance on action planning as they prepared for the work ahead.

Viscardi said they have already gotten started on action items, with Glass putting out an “all call” in September, seeking six to eight community members willing to give a two-year commitment to participate in a DLBE advisory team.

A written commitment

They are also developing a written commitment to families articulating the program scope expectations and goals; and will develop and publish a formal written language allocation plan, in collaboration with and to protect Spanish zone instructional time. Viscardi said they have to be able to protect Spanish instructional time, and be able to provide a viable substitute coverage plan, “and be mindful about how much time we’re pulling teachers out of the classroom for professional development and other related activities.”

She said another recommendation that warrants immediate attention is to establish a unified professional development plan. 

Viscardi said the more you study the recommendations, “the more you see how interconnected they are, how layered,” and the work is complex. 

“We anticipate that this will yield a lot of lively conversation,” said Viscardi. Another of the immediate recommendations, she said, is “building capacity, building understanding of DLBE more widely in our district leadership, increasing our collective knowledge of bilingual education.” 

In the classroom

She said one piece that she and Rojas have already taken action on is including Glass and Fishkin in all of their planning, “so they really get a better sense of what’s happening at the classroom level and a programmatic level.”

Another feature of this particular recommendation, said Viscardi, is that “it really dovetails beautifully” with the work that they’re doing in response to the Public Consulting Group report on Special Education; specifically, those recommendations around multilingual learners.

“It’s going to continue to develop achievement for those students and be connected to our larger strategic plan and district vision,” she said.

Board President Gillian Klein and trustee Steven Matlin both thanked Viscardi for the work that is going in to “laying the roadmap” for the work moving forward. Matlin urged that there be attention and analysis of how any recommendations that are brought back to the board impact other departments, “so that when those recommendations come back, we don’t have to say to you, hey, you need to think about this because it really impacts more than just the self-contained dual language program.” He said that would help expedite the process.

 “I do think the advisory committee’s structure being representative and including internal stakeholders, including the four of us,” Glass said, “should help ensure that we touch all the input from each constituency.” 

He said the hope is that they have the right people and a representative group at the advisory committee level to help watch for things, and facilitate communication.