The Whitewater Unified School District attempts to identify all new students who may enter its Multilingual (ML) Program through the initial online registration process on Infinite Campus (IC). When a student registers in the Whitewater Unified School District, the family completes an electronic registration/enrollment form. Embedded in this online registration is the Home Language Survey (HLS), a critical component in screening for and identifying potential Multilingual learner (ML) students. The Whitewater Unified School District conducts a home language survey for every newly enrolled student.  

Students enrolling for the first time in a Whitewater Unified-sponsored early childhood education program such as 4K will be administered an HLS at the time of enrollment. However, there are currently no valid English Language Proficiency (ELP) screeners for students in this age range. For this reason, students are flagged as potential ML students, but not formally identified as MLs before their 5K enrollment.

During registration, if a parent indicates that a student’s native language is one other than English, another language is spoken in the home, and/or the student interacts in a language other than English a majority of the time or has been previously enrolled in ML/EL programming, the student will be considered for multilingual services, and an English language proficiency screener will be administered.

The Whitewater Unified School District utilizes the WIDA Screener as an initial test of language proficiency. A trained test administrator (certified annually) will administer the WIDA Screener Online or WIDA Screener Paper for newly enrolled multilingual students in grades 1-12 and the WIDA Screener for Kindergarten for new multilingual Kindergarten students. A student who is in the first semester of first grade can still take the WIDA Screener for Kindergarten. WIDA Screener scores are calculated and interpreted to determine a students’ English proficiency level. To learn more about how the WIDA Screener is scored and to understand the scores, please refer to the WIDA Screener Interpretive Guide for Score Reports.

To gather additional information regarding the student’s linguistic repertoire, educational history, and wealth of knowledge, a SLIFE interview will be conducted with all incoming multilingual students/families in person or over the phone. Generally, the district Bilingual Liaison will conduct the SLIFE interview.