e.s.l. office banner

Welcome to the Office of Multilingual Learners (OML) Program. With more than 10,000 Multilingual Learners (MLs), JCPS is truly a diverse district. The OML Department provides wrap-around services, including identification, registration assistance, language services, and instructional support. Here you can find procedures and descriptions that define the services offered in JCPS. In addition, we have provided valuable resources and links for MLs, their families, and teachers.

Lau Plan for Multilingual Learners

Lau Plan translations: Arabic | Nepali | Somali | Spanish | Swahili

The JCPS OML Department's curricular approach is guided by WIDA's Office of Multilingual Learners (OML) Standards, which are built on WIDA's Guiding Principles of Language Development:

  1. Students’ languages and cultures are valuable resources to be tapped and incorporated into schooling.
  2. Students’ home, school, and community experiences influence their language development.
  3. Students draw on their metacognitive, metalinguistic, and metacultural awareness to develop proficiency in additional languages.
  4. Students' academic language development in their native language facilitates their academic language development in English. Conversely, students' academic language development in English informs their academic language development in their native language.
  5.  Students learn language and culture through meaningful use and interaction.
  6. Students use language in functional and communicative ways that vary according to context.
  7. Students develop language proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing interdependently, but at different rates and in different ways.
  8. Students’ development of academic language and academic content knowledge are inter-related processes.
  9. Students' development of social, instructional, and academic language, a complex and long-term process, is the foundation for their success in school.
  10. Students’ access to instructional tasks requiring complex thinking is enhanced when linguistic complexity and instructional support match their levels of language proficiency.