ELL News Headlines

Despite New York City’s last-minute withdrawal of a controversial proposal for a new artificial intelligence-centered high school, parents, students, and educators packed this week’s school board meeting to speak on AI anyway.

Alyssa McFeat was one of the 15 students and 67 staff members at the Aveson Global Leadership Academy who lost their homes — and their school — in the Eaton fire, one of eight major wildfires that caused widespread destruction in California last year. Across the state, these wildfires would disrupt school for over half a million students as they raged on for close to a month, according to a news report from NPR.

The Los Angeles Unified School District unanimously voted to curb classroom screen time, directing staff to develop a policy by June ahead of the upcoming school year. The resolution aims to set clear limits on how screens are used in classrooms across grade levels. It was championed by Schools Beyond Screens, a group of parents that has spent months pressuring the district to evaluate how the use of devices is impacting student learning, especially in the earlier grades.

At the Frank Hotchkin Memorial Training Center earlier this month, teams of 10 high school students, sporting red and blue uniforms stitched with badges representing four fire academies, raced to complete a series of tactical challenges that simulate a real-life fire emergency. For many students, the Palisades and Eaton fires became a turning point in their path to becoming first responders. 

The Education Department plans to dissolve the office that supports the country’s 5 million English learners. The Office of English Language Acquisition already was decimated in early rounds of layoffs. Last August, the Department quietly rescinded guidance that many states and school districts rely on to protect the rights of immigrant students.

Since January 2025, educators and advocates for English learners and immigrant students have raised concerns about support for these populations, even as schools' federal obligations to them remain intact.

Helping students identified as English learners to acquire the English language often requires funding on top of general education spending to cover the cost of additional instructional resources, teachers, aides, and other supports. But experts say the amount needed to meet these students’ needs can vary by thousands of additional dollars per student depending on factors such as language-proficiency levels, whether those students have had a limited or interrupted education, and what staffing capacity schools may already have on hand.

Successful co-teachers build their partnership on trust by establishing clear roles and making time to plan together.

School Library Journal interviews Curator Cynthia Leitich Smith and Editor Rosemary Brosnan about Heartdrum, a Native imprint that has published more than 30 books in five years and continues to grow.

Teachers don’t need to speak students’ home languages to use them as a resource for learning and creating a sense of belonging.