The letter responded to four points raised by the SPLC including; "(1) Not employing sufficient qualified staff to effectively implement its language program; (2) exiting ELL students based only on their speaking ability (not their reading or writing ability), (3) failing to appropriately monitor students that have exited the program, and; (4) decentralizing oversight of the language program from administrators "with specialized knowledge of district and federal ESL requirements" to principals who are ill-equipped to implement ESL programs at their schools. As a consequence, you informed OCR that ELL students are failing to make yearly progress and are struggling academically on standardized tests."
The letter states that the first issue is being incorporated into an already-existing complaint against the school district and will be incorporated with that case. The OCR will open new investigations into the second and third causes of concern.
