Rethinking Equity and Teaching for English Language Learners (RETELL)

Notification to update list of CATs assigned ELLs in 2016

Dear Superintendent/RETELL Liaison, Through the hard work of schools, districts, and educators over 37,000 of educators have been trained and received the Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) endorsement. We thank you for your collaboration. In our April 8 communication, we alerted Superintendent's and RETELL Liaisons of an additional opportunity to earn an SEI endorsement for certain educators in the 2015-2016 cohort. Unfortunately not all educators were able to receive the endorsement in the 2015-2016 school year through no fault of their own. We estimate this to apply to approximately 3,000 educators. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) plans to offer a limited number (100-150) SEI endorsement courses during the 2016-2017 school year for these educators. Educators who will be eligible for no-cost, state-offered courses in 2016-2017 are those who were required to earn the endorsement during their districts' cohort windows and who, during the 2015-2016 school year:

enrolled in a 2015-2016 SY course that was subsequently cancelled by DESE;
placed themselves on a waitlist for a 2015-2016 SY course, but were not offered an open seat in a course;
applied for and were granted a hardship extension; or
were assigned an ELL for the first time during the 2015-2016 school year but did not have adequate time to enroll in a course.

ESE is compiling a list of these educators and will notify them individually of their eligibility and course registration procedures. Enrollment in these courses will be restricted to only those educators who are eligible.

Identifying Educators and Adminisstrators

Schools and districts update information on ELLs and educators through SIMS and EPIMS in the fall. Unfortunately, there may be Core Academic Educators who were assigned ELLs for the first time during the 2015-2016 school year and Administrators who were assigned to supervise or evaluate a Core Academic Teacher of an ELL student for the first time during the 2015-2016 SY that we did not capture. Those individuals could not register but were eligible for a no-cost course. In order to ensure that the opportunity to take a no-cost course is made available to these educators, we developed a process to capture and update that information. A spreadsheet is being made available to you that lists all core academic teachers, principals and assistant principals employed by your district as of September of 2015. ESE is requesting that you or a designee follow the procedure outlined in the attachment to update your district's excel spreadsheet to indicate which educators were assigned an ELL for the first time during your district's training window after September 1, 2015. The deadline for updating this file is June 24, 2016 at 4:00 pm. At that time, the DESE will compile all files and finalize the list of educators who will be invited to participate in a no-cost SEI course in 2016-2017. We will provide the district with the finalized list and will notify the eligible educators and administrators. ESE can only accept updates to the list by means of this procedure, and the file must be uploaded as an excel file and not in any other format. It cannot accept e-mails, phone calls, or other sheets/lists. Please ensure that you follow the procedure as it is stated. If you do not, then educators may potentially be excluded from participation in a course to which they are eligible. Also, you may receive questions regarding eligibility. To clarify, educators who will not be granted a no-cost opportunity to participate in a 2016-2017 SY course include:

Educators who previously registered for a no-cost course, and either did not attend the course, or did not complete the course successfully with a score of 70% or higher.
Educators who were previously assigned an ELL student during the first year(s) of the training window for their district (for Cohort 2 districts this includes the 2013-2014 SY and 2014-2015 SY; for Cohort 3 districts this includes the 2014-2015 SY only) and did not register or waitlist for a no-cost course during the training window.
Educators who are not Core Academic Teachers or Administrators who supervise or evaluate Core Academic Teachers of ELL students.

If you have any questions submit a ticket through the online inquiry system or by visiting the RETELL webpage and clicking on the "Feedback/Questions" link to the left.

Last Updated: May 26, 2016