D21 some notes on Russian Program at POE:
Due to the changing guidelines in exiting criteria (which was lowered this year) given by the State of Illinois, the program is already projected to shrink next year. That would mean that many children who would meet that criteria would be going to their home schools.
Those things do come from the state, but our district is in a financial crisis, just like everyone at this time. Due to this fact they are also looking how to save, and the first things that go usually programs that are not backed up by vocal parents :)

-If you have an incoming KG student in our district, and would like to register
him/her, please do it as soon as possible. It will help to keep the projection
number more realistic for classes configurations.
-If you are a parent at Poe school, please try to come to at least 1 PTO meeting
at Poe, and take few of your fellow parents with you. PTO does do a lot for all
the kids and school in general. But russian parents get a very bad reputation for not
taking any part in it.

Are they going to cut the Spanish and Korean Programs as well? In our dist. (102) they are already splitting Russian Program Teacher between two schools-Tripp and Pritchett and they testing K students before they enrolled how well they know english. ;)

We don' t have Korean program. Only Spanish (bilingual i think), and transitional general ESL and Russian ESL.
Of course, they are not going ot cut Spanish ESL...V distrikte kucha administracii s etogo kormyatsya... Odna ESL lady chego stoit - she makes over 100K while there had been NO improvment in test scores in district 21 Bil Spanish students over X years...

But Russian and General ESL are easy cuts...
Forgot, there is Polish ESL at Frost and I bet that would NOT get cut either. Polish kids do get mainstreamed as well but stay at Frost until middle school.

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=367249&src=107

still 4 millions short...
means mainstream classrooms will be packed to maximum...
Let take POE- 3rd grade - 1 russian esl (around 18 kids), 1 special ed(?) or some other type SMALL classroom, 2 mainstream classes that are pretty close to capacity.
Under current budget constraints, main goal for schools in the district - NOT to add new teachers. Now, most russian ESL parents, don't want their kids mainstreamed but doing nothing about it... On another hand, district mainstreams according to standards...
My prediction, come 4th grade - number of kids that have to be in mainstream classroom will exceed number of spaces available in mainstream classes at POE so some kids will be sent to homeschools...

also, if lower standards allow to admi less kids into K ESL and mainstream more kids out of 1st grade - those two grades can be combined and one teacher can be cut. Obviously, any other two ESL grades could be combined if lower standards push for more kids to be mainstreamed or not even enrolled into ESL starting at K. The beauty of transitional program - administration of the district can manipulate numbers any way they want it while disregarding parents and kids.

By the way, I don't think polish kids are going to homeschools from Frost.
Did they take a different test ?????

If parents did get together and did ask for full-immersion program maybe they would not be scratiching their heads now...

School Salaries - http://www.familytaxpayers.org/salary.php

May 20 notes about how effective ESL department in D21 is:
Thanks for using our kids as statistics ):
the head of d21 esl is well worth her $132K salary now
"
Ell Program Update
The performance of the program of
instruction for English Language
Learners was reviewed for the Board of
Education. Today, School District 21
continues to use multiple measures of
student performance to determine their
success and their instructional program.
Since instituting the restructuring of the
ELL Program, the number of students
exiting has continued to increase."

should have said - since reducing standards for exiting program, we had been able to show progess

S21 - Longfellow school in BG will have early start program for kids K-4

August “Soaring for Success” Program
If you would like to enroll your child in our August 16-19, 2010, “Soaring for
Success” program (for students currently in Grades K-4 who could benefit from
an early start to the school year), please register now. The program runs from
9:00 a.m.-noon each day with a focus on core language arts and math skills.
Please contact our school office at 847-520-2755 if you need a form. Note: We
also offer an early-start program for all incoming kindergarteners August 16-18,
from 12:30-2:00 p.m. each day. Additional forms for this program, “Ready, Set,
Go!”, are available in our school office as well.