Are you seeing districts shift ESL roles to hourly interventionist positions after the ESSER cliff? In Chicago and Phoenix this fall I’ve tracked postings moving from certificated FTEs to 0.6–0.8 FTE grant-funded roles with “bilingual preferred,” which undermines stability for multilingual learners — how is this playing out in your hiring and retention?
In our suburban Denver district, HR floated moving two ESL roles to 0.7 hourly; we pushed an MOU guaranteeing at least 0.8 FTE with benefits and an automatic bump to 1.0 when EL counts cross a set threshold — otherwise it’s musical chairs with a time clock. Using midyear WIDA growth dips plus the ‘bilingual preferred’ + 0.6–0.8 FTE phrasing helped us raise supplement-not-supplant concerns. Anyone willing to share a caseload-to-FTE formula that worked?
Seeing the same drift to ‘hourly interventionist’ here, so we braided Title III with general fund and posted ESL as itinerant teacher-of-record across two schools to keep them salaried with benefits — retention ticked up. Small caveat: scheduling turns into Tetris at 7 a.m. without principal buy-in to share staffing. Are your finance folks open to split funding to hold the salary line?
We baked an EL-based staffing ratio into the budget book (1 ESL FTE per 55 identified ELs), so grants can only add capacity and HR stopped posting hourly ‘interventionist’ roles that undercut it. In small schools we still split across two sites, but it stays salaried with benefits — no hourly drift — @amanda_r91, have you gotten a ratio codified, and if so, what number worked for your board?