Aurora Public Schools

Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Education Department

Welcome Center

The APS Welcome Center supports refugee, migrant and newcomer immigrant students and their families as they transition and acclimate to school in Aurora Public Schools and the Aurora community.  The refugee and immigrant families who are new to Aurora are referred from Centralized Admissions to the APS Welcome Center.  The Welcome Center assesses the students' academic, social and emotional background and transcript, and supports students and schools in the appropriate grade placement.  The close collaboration and communication between the Welcome Center and schools enables the receiving school to be better prepared to welcome each refugee and immigrant student.  The Welcome Center will also provide immigrant and refugee families with an orientations to Aurora Public Schools and the U.S. Educational system, which will allow the students and their families to feel more comfortable when starting school in APS. View the Welcome Center website to learn more.

Central Language Services Office

The Central Language Services Office (CLSO) team offers a variety of interpretation and translation services and resources for district-wide needs.

• View the CLSO parent resources.

Identification & Monitoring

• Intake
• Misidentification
• ESS

Redesignation

• Redesignation is a legal term used to describe students' language proficiency status.  In Aurora Public Schools, redesignation is the process used to evaluate Multilingual Learners' achievement and 'redesignate' students from Limited English Proficient (LEP) status to Fluent English Proficient (FEP) status.  Following redesignations as FEP, students' academic progress must be monitored for 2 years at which point they will be exited.

Monitoring

• After redesignation, a student moves to monitoring status for two years.  During this time, CLDE Consultants remain in contact with the general education/content area teacher(s) and CLDE Teacher Leaders at each building to check and document the progress of monitored students.  The Colorado Department of Education recommends an ongoing, documented evaluation, two to four times per year for these students because monitored students are still considered to be in-program and should receive linguistic or academic support as needed during the monitoring period.  After the two year monitoring period, a student is exited from the CLDE program if it is determined that during the monitoring period they were able to participate in the academic content without remediation.

READ Act Plans and Multilingual Learners

• The READ Act is a Colorado law that sets guidelines to ensure every student completes third-grade reading at or above grade level. It helps schools to identify students who need additional instructional support in order to read at grade level.  Multilingual learners who are in-program to receive Dedicated ELD services in APS, have special considerations that need to be made when writing, monitoring and instructionally supporting these students toward their READ plan goals.

  View informational brochures in the following languages about READ plans below:

  • Parent Brochure - English
  • Parent Brochure - Amharic
  • Parent Brochure - Arabic
  • Parent Brochure - Burmese
  • Parent Brochure - Chinese
  • Parent Brochure - Farsi
  • Parent Brochure - French
  • Parent Brochure - Karen
  • Parent Brochure - Khmer
  • Parent Brochure - Nepali
  • Parent Brochure - Oromo
  • Parent Brochure - Somali
  • Parent Brochure - Spanish
  • Parent Brochure - Swahili
  • Parent Brochure - Vietnamese