Instructional Staff

Paragraph 46. The District shall actively recruit qualified, properly endorsed ESL and SEI staff for relevant teaching positions. In addition, the District shall actively recruit bilingual staff trained in working with ELLs, and staff with fluency in one or more of the languages of the District’s ELLs for relevant teaching and administrative positions, and in particular for positions as SPED teachers and aides.

Paragraph 47. Toward that end, the District’s notices regarding employee vacancies shall express an interest in candidates with ESL, ELL, SEI, or bilingual credentials and language fluency in a language other than English.

Paragraph 48. The District shall ensure that all ESL instruction is provided by a teacher who is certified in ESL and qualified to teach ESL. To meet this requirement, the District shall utilize the following methods or resources to recruit, hire, assign, retain, and/or train adequate numbers of ESL certified teachers for its ELLs, among others:

• a. The Boston Teacher Residency Program for individuals new to teaching;
• b. Boston Pathways for teachers with experience teaching but new to ESL;
• c. ESL professional development for ESL staff;
• d. ESL professional development for HILT teachers, as required by Paragraph 64;
• e. The District shall not offer “reasonable assurance” to any newly hired core content course instructor, following the first year of their employment, that they will be rehired in the forthcoming year, nor shall the District rehire any such teacher, unless they have made substantial progress toward completing training in Categories 1, 2, 3, and 4, or toward obtaining an ESL certification. A teacher shall be deemed to have made substantial progress toward completing training if s/he has completed in the first year of employment (i) at least Categories 2 and 4 or (ii) approximately half of the ESL certification requirements, and is committed to completing Category training or the ESL certification requirements prior to the end of the last month of his/her second year of employment. The District shall not rehire any such teacher for a third year of employment if s/he has not completed training in Categories 1 through 4 or obtained an ESL certification.
• f. The District shall require all non-tenured year one and year two core content teachers of ELLs to obtain an ESL certification or to complete the Category 1, 2, 3, and 4 training as a condition of tenure.

Paragraph 49. The District shall require that principals/headmasters assign ESL certified teachers’ instructional time to teaching ESL classes as needed to provide all ELLs in their respective schools with the ESL instruction required by Paragraphs 32 and 38-42. In assigning such teachers, the District shall require principals to prioritize provisional teachers and permanent teachers whose primary program area is ESL. The District shall ensure that each school maximizes the number of ELLs receiving ESL instruction with an ESL certified teacher and maximizes its utilization of existing staff with training in Categories 1, 2, and 4 or ESL certification. To meet this requirement, the District, when assigning ELLs to ESL classes, shall assign ELLs first to ESL certified teachers prior to assigning them to teachers who have yet to obtain an ESL certification, subject to the class size and teacher ratio limitations set forth in Paragraph 45.

Paragraph 50. The District shall update its ESL Curriculum Frameworks (BPSECF) and ESL curricula, and provide training on the updated curriculum frameworks and curricula to all principals/headmasters who evaluate ESL teachers, LAT facilitators, and teachers assigned to teach ESL. The District shall provide the United States documentation of such training and a list of attendees by October 15 of each year beginning with the 2012-2013 school year.

Paragraph 51. The District shall ensure that the District’s adopted ESL materials are available and in use in all ESL classrooms and that grade-appropriate training on using the District’s adopted ESL materials is provided to all ESL teachers who have yet to receive this training.

Paragraph 52. The District shall ensure that all core content instruction for ELLs is provided by teachers who are certified in the content area and adequately trained to shelter content instruction based on current SEI instructional techniques. Toward that end, subject to any changes in MADESE mandates approved by the United States:

• a. The District shall ensure that adequate numbers of teachers are trained in at least Categories 1, 2, and 4 at each school enrolling ELLs;
• b. The District shall ensure that trainings for Categories 1, 2, and 4, or other MADESE-mandated training, are offered during the summer and the school year to all teachers who deliver content to ELLs; and that the capacity of each training is sufficient to accommodate the number of teachers who seek to attend;
• c. The District shall ensure that supplemental SEI training is provided to its SEI teachers to address deficiencies in the current Category training curriculum and the inadequate transfer of the Category training to BPS’ SEI classrooms. The training shall, at a minimum, ground teachers in current methods of making content delivered in English accessible to ELLs in order to promote the use of these methods in classrooms;
• d. At the District’s request, the Boston Teacher Residents Program has added Category training to the pre-service programs for incoming teachers to the District;
• e. The District shall require all non-tenured year one and year two core content teachers of ELLs to complete the Category 1, 2, 3, and 4 training or to obtain an ESL certification as a condition of tenure;
• f. The District shall have all teachers at the twelve turn-around schools complete the Category 1, 2, and 4 training;
• g. The District shall require that principals/headmasters assign ESL certified teachers to teach SEI content classes within their “primary program area,” as this term is defined in the current CBA with the Boston Teachers Union (BTU) and by District practice, as needed to provide all ELLs in their respective schools with the SEI instruction required by Paragraphs 44 and 45;
• h. The District shall provide one in-service credit to each teacher who completes 15 hours of Category training, which presently results in one credit for Categories 1 and 4 and two credits for Category 2; and
• i. The District shall not offer “reasonable assurance” to any newly hired core content course instructor, following their first year of their employment, that they will be rehired in the forthcoming year, nor shall the District rehire any such teacher, unless they have made substantial progress toward completing training in Categories 1, 2, 3, and 4, or toward obtaining an ESL certification. A teacher shall be deemed to have made substantial progress toward completing training if s/he has completed in the first year of employment (i) at least Categories 2 and 4 or (ii) half of the ESL certification requirements and is committed to completing Category training or the ESL certification requirements prior to the end of the last month of his/her second year of employment. The District shall not rehire any such teacher for a third year of employment if s/he has not completed training in Categories 1 through 4 or obtained an ESL certification.

Paragraph 53. By April 30, 2012, and by October 15 and March 31 each year thereafter, the District shall provide the United States an updated OELL/HR ELL Category Training Report that includes for each school: (a) the name of each teacher; (b) whether s/he has completed each of the Category trainings (Categories 1, 2, 3, and 4) and any supplemental SEI training; (c) whether s/he has an ESL license; (d) his/her primary program area; (e) the teacher’s time and/or daily hours assigned to SEI core content instruction; and (f) the teacher’s time or daily hours assigned to ESL instruction.