Hannaly Sandoval Garcia

“Facing the real world after graduation, but never learning English properly.”

Until this school year, Fremont High School’s English Language Learner (ELL) program was not adequately preparing students for academic success. For years, students developing English were placed on a path that taught them how to learn the language, but not how to learn in the language. The resulting gap grew wider each year, extending beyond language acquisition into overall academic performance and graduation outcomes.

Counselor and former ELL instructor Desiree Hayden-Parra said the issue was impossible to ignore.

“I could feel it in my bones that something needed to change,” Hayden-Parra said.

Previously, Fremont’s ELL program focused primarily on language acquisition during students’ first two years of high school. Once students passed the English Language Proficiency Assessment, they were placed into traditional courses. However, meeting that benchmark did not necessarily prepare them for the academic demands that followed.

Academic language and conversational language are fundamentally different. While students may be able to communicate with peers and family, they may still struggle with complex vocabulary found on standardized tests or in college-level coursework. Words such as ephemeral or sycophant can become barriers rather than measures of learning. As a result, the previous program did not fully prepare students for one of Fremont High School’s core objectives: college readiness.

“Say you take Spanish 1, 2, 3 and 4,” Hayden-Parra said. “Now I’m going to drop you off in a remote part of Mexico. You have to go to school there and pass all of your classes. You can’t? But you took all the basic Spanish classes. A lot of what you learn when you’re first learning a language is not academically based.”

During the 2024–2025 school year, Fremont High School enrolled 363 ELL students, accounting for 22% of the student body. Only 60% of those students were graduating. Students who had not yet mastered academic English were often set up to struggle.

For several years, Hayden-Parra, district multilingual educators and administrators advocated for a systemic redesign to address the issue.

Director of Special Programs Brent Cudly said the district looked to similar schools for guidance.

“One of the special programs I work with is the Multilingual Learners (ML) program, formerly ELL,” Cudly said. “Two years ago, we visited Lexington Public Schools because its graduation rates among ML students were very high. During that visit, we learned about their version of a Newcomer Academy. In December 2024, I met with the ML teachers at FHS, and we began planning what our version of a Newcomer Academy could look like. We met monthly, and during the summer of 2025, teachers worked on developing new courses to help students learn English and earn enough credits to graduate from high school.”

The redesigned program, now known as the Newcomer Academy, is Fremont’s attempt to bridge the gap between language learning and academic readiness.

When Hayden-Parra first joined Fremont as a Newcomer Academy teacher, she quickly realized the position lacked structure.

 “There were no books. Literally nothing,” Hayden-Parra said. “I had to create the curriculum, which was extremely stressful. This population is very near and dear to me. My husband is from Mexico, and he was an ELL student. I recognize the struggles these kids have, and I knew something needed to be done.” 

Hayden-Parra recognized the program’s flaws, but as a first-year teacher, she lacked access to the data needed to support systemic change. Three years later, as an FHS counselor, she brings experience and evidence to back her intuition.  

 “As a teacher, I realized that these issues existed but could only see the frontline problems,”  Hayden-Parra said. “I didn’t have access to dive deeper into the data on everything; it was just a lot of gut feelings, professional judgment, if you will. Having those numbers and the data to back it up is what I think really made the difference.”

This school year marks the first full implementation of the ML Academy. While graduation and test score data have not yet changed, staff members are working to alter the long-term trajectory for students in the program.

“In Applied Math 1, we are currently doing a section on algebraic words and phrases,” math teacher Ryan Sweeny said. “Things like practicing reading through a story problem, and identifying what the words mean mathematically, while connecting that to some of the notes we took.” 

Teachers and administrators hope the new approach will improve graduation rates and academic outcomes. However, the transition has presented challenges. ML Academy students now take six to eight classes per day, compared to the typical four-class schedule, and teachers are planning for additional courses without extra preparation time.

 “There are definitely people I can reach out to for support, and as far as the day-to-day with students goes, things have been pretty good so far; however, there are issues behind the scenes,: Sweeny said. “Over the summer, we had like six days set aside to work on curriculum, and for some teachers, that was okay because maybe they only had one new class, but for those of us who got three new classes, it was not a lot of time to work with. I still ended up paying tons of extra time and attention to planning over the summer. As we were planning, some things were still being altered or changed within the courses as we were trying to create them. My frustrations are more towards trying to figure out what is expected.”

Because students are taking twice as many classes, the time spent in each class is split in half. This means that students with six classes a day have split blocks for three of them. Rather than rotating with the rest of the school on the normal bell schedule, they have to stop class at around 40 minutes to transition instead of the usual 88.

“Between introducing the information and providing work time, the students have to switch classes,” science teacher Marisol Fernandez said. “Even if I’m not done teaching, time is up. At that point, it’s like, ‘OK, I’ll just try my best tomorrow.’”

Some courses are still being developed as the school year progresses.

“There are some classes right now that we are still building from the ground up,” Sweeny said. “We don’t have many resources for those yet, and the sizes of some classes are overwhelming. At the beginning of the school year, I didn’t have enough desks for everyone, and for one class, I didn’t even have access to the curriculum until a week or two later.”

Despite the growing pains, teachers and administrators remain optimistic. While the Newcomer Academy is still evolving, those involved believe it represents a meaningful step toward equity and academic success for Fremont’s multilingual students.