A new program that aims to teach students in English and Spanish is launching in a Merced school.
Don Stowell Elementary recently announced it was kicking off a dual language immersion (DLI) program for the upcoming 2025-26 school year.
The program is not new to the county, but it is the first one within the Merced City School District, the largest school district in the county.
Veronica Villa, the district’s English learner coordinator, said the new program is an opportunity to better equip students with skills for life outside the classroom.
“We live in a multilingual world,” Villa said. “So if we can prepare [our students], I hope the ripple effect is that our future generations can experience the great gift of language.”
Stowell Elementary is launching the program at the start of the next school year with an inaugural cohort of kindergarteners and will gradually increase grade offerings as those students rise in grade level.
Up to 54 spots will be available for students between two classrooms, Villa said. The classes will be evenly split between native Spanish speakers and native English speakers.
Teachers are still to be determined, but they will be chosen from a pool of instructors already working in the district.
Though the DLI program is open to all kindergarten students at Stowell, Villa said priority will be given to those living within the school’s neighborhood, siblings of current DLI students, and students within the Merced City School District boundaries.
Registration and enrollment for the program are now open.
Program driven by community needs
Parents in the Merced area asked for a DLI program to be in their schools for years, Villa said.
The district saw an increase in demand during its Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) community feedback sessions last spring.
Administrators went on to create a task force to visit nearby schools and observe their DLI programs. In fall of 2024, the team visited campuses in Atwater, Los Banos, Delhi, Livingston and Fresno to learn what qualities and practices were needed to make their own program successful.
Plans for the new program were finalized after multiple parent DLI listening sessions.
Dual language immersion programs help students learn to speak, read, listen and write in multiple languages. According to state data, the most common language taught in immersion programs is Spanish – followed by Vietnamese, Mandarin and Tagalog.
In the central San Joaquin Valley, learning in languages such as Punjabi and Hmong are also available.
The goal for these programs is for students to become fluent and literate in multiple languages to prepare them for future career and educational opportunities. Research from the National Institutes of Health shows bilingual education boosts cognitive abilities, improves performance on standardized tests, and raises self-esteem among students.
In Merced County, dual immersion programs are offered in a handful of schools. Livingston Union, Delhi Unified, and Los Banos Unified school districts all offer language learning in Spanish and English.
Most recently, the Atwater Elementary School District launched its first dual immersion program in 2023.
‘It’s a multi-year commitment.’
According to the Merced City School District, the program will follow a 90/10 instructional model, where kindergarteners will receive 90% of their instruction in Spanish and 10% in English.
The English instruction will gradually increase yearly as students age up, with a goal of reaching a 50/50 balance between the two languages by the time they reach fifth grade, following recommended state guidelines.
But Villa warned students may encounter bumps in the road the first few years in the program.
“The initial years of dual language immersion for a child and their family are difficult,” Villa said. “The student may feel a little bit overwhelmed. They may feel a little lost. But parents need to be patient in the process. It’s not a one-year commitment. It’s a multi-year commitment.”
The first group of students from Stowell will continue their immersion learning until eighth grade. When they reach high school, they can enroll in language courses in the Merced Union High School District to earn their State Seal of Biliteracy.
Until then, Villa hopes to see more growth of the program within her district.
“My hope is that over time, students and their families learn how beneficial it is to be multilingual. We need to have an invested interest from our community,” she said.
For now, Merced City School District only offers a Spanish immersion program. But Villa said there’s room for the program to include other languages, such as Hmong.
“Absolutely, we would want to expand to other languages,” Villa said. “It all would go by the need and the interest level of our community and what fits best in our schools.”