After 11 years, FUESD approves new language arts curriculum

When the next school year begins on Aug. 16, teachers in the Fallbrook Union Elementary District will have a new language arts curriculum for the first time in 11 years.

The district's governing board unanimously approved the adoption of the English language arts instructional materials at its June 21 meeting. The curriculum selected was Benchmark Advance and Adelante for grades TK-5 and McGraw Hill's StudySync for grades 6th-8th.

"This is one of the biggest things we do because we don't do it very often," said Julie Norby, associate superintendent, educational services, during the board presentation.

Norby was joined by Dr. Lea Curcio, director of curriculum and instruction, and two teachers from the adoption committee in making the presentation to the board. Teachers making comments at the meeting were Marisela Gonzales and Jennifer Mariucci.

The recommended curriculum has been reviewed and approved by a selection committee of 30 teachers in grades in grades TK-8, as well as site and district level administration. The materials were made available for public preview from June 7 to June 25.

The materials for teachers and students have been ordered, staff said, and the goal is to have every teacher trained before classes begin for the new school year. Money is budgeted for teachers to have 10 hours of professional development training in July and four hours in August.

Teachers would be paid hourly for the extra time beyond their contracts.

The curriculum is in compliance with California English Language Development Standards, as well as with the state's English Language Arts standards. The process of establishing the chosen curriculum began with establishing the ELA Adoption Committee. The committee met for approximately 30 hours together and up to another 30 hours in subgroups.

The committee established priorities based on student and teacher needs, according to the presentation, and then reviewed the curriculum evaluation rubrics and standards. The material was reviewed with the goal of finding a more comprehensive and cohesive curriculum to address the ELA and English Language Development framework.

The committee was introduced to material from 14 publishers and narrowed their choices to the top eight – four for grades TK-5 and four for grades 6-9 – before making the final recommendation.

Those publishers, the finalists, made presentations to the committee. The committee then had a team discussion. The process included teaching lessons from the programs, as well as feedback from students.

In the TK-5 discussion, the committee narrowed it down to the top two with heavy consensus for Benchmark Advance and Benchmark Adelante (Spanish). For grades 6-8, the group narrowed it down to StudySync.

The report to the board cited these highlights of StudySync for the middle school:

• Strong state standards alignment with integrated reading and writing.

• Embedded ELA skills lessons.

• Integrated and designated support resources.

• Extended writing projects connected to the reading standards.

• Unit novel selections and consumable student textbooks.

• Technology that includes multimedia resources, Spanish student resources, and assessments.

• Engaging topics with choice for students.

• Offers diverse literature and pair reading selections at various reading levels.

Highlights of Benchmark for grades TK-5 included:

• Standards-aligned with strong ELD for designated and integrated time.

• Balance literature and informational text related vertical topics K-5 aligned to state science/social studies standards.

• Intervention curriculum that matches grade level unit topics.

• Foundational reading component.

• Consumable student textbook for pair texts.

• Technology component – Benchmark Universe library, assessment, and progress monitoring.

• Authentic Spanish materials.

Board members said they were pleased that in younger grades students would be taught both by phonics and sight words.

District says CRT not part of curriculums

Critical Race Theory is a controversial subject in many school districts across the nation. However, the new English Language Arts curriculum approved by the governing board of the Fallbrook Union Elementary School District last month won't bring any changes related to CRT, a district spokesman said.

Seth Trench, communications director, said the district's curriculum and instructor team responded to Village News questions about the curriculum.

"Regarding our ELA curriculum, we used a rubric to determine if the curriculum met certain criteria of educational/ELA goals," he reported. "Curriculum that represents our student population in terms of stories with various ethnicities being represented and by a variety of authors is always a consideration, but not at the expense of the quality of the ELA materials and alignment with the California State Standards."

"Specifically to answer your question of CRT, this is not something currently formed into a curriculum in past or present ELA curriculums," he

said.