Kids are constantly growing existing skills while learning new ones during early childhood, and for preschoolers in the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP) at Virgie Robinson Elementary School in Pasco they’re doing it in two languages. Over the 2025-26 school year, the three ECEAP classrooms operated by ESD 123 piloted a new dual-language program, using an 80-20 simultaneous learning program where 80% of a day’s instruction is given in Spanish and 20% in English.
In Pasco, where many preschoolers are already multilingual learners at home and 35.8% of enrolled K-12 students are identified as English Language Learners, this simultaneous learning model is similar to what many students are already used to at home, while students who only know one language get a head start on bilingual language acquisition.
“We started in Pasco because a lot of their kids will move on to a dual-language elementary school,” says Matt Bona, ESD 123 Director of Early Learning. “Even the more predominantly English-speaking students are going to have a huge head start going into a dual-language elementary school.”
Bona and Jennifer Cowgill, Director of Multilingual Learning, initially began developing this early learning dual-language program in collaboration with the ESD 123 ECEAP administration team of Heather Pearson, Tammy Buckingham, and Patricia Garcia, after a visit to the Sobrato Early Academic Language (SEAL) program in California. Their goal was to build a strong, evidence-supported program, where both administrators and teachers know what they are doing and why.
Since implementing the program in classrooms at the beginning of the school year, Bona and ECEAP Site Coordinator Lisset Gonzalez visited classrooms each month to observe teachers, give feedback, and provide professional development to share different strategies and real-world examples to help develop their skills.
After this first year, Bona says he’s impressed by the teachers and how well they’ve fit the program into instruction. On top of piloting the new dual-language program, the ECEAP team at Virgie Robinson Elementary earned a Level 5 rating in the Early Achievers program during this past school year, reflecting the highest standard of excellence in early education.
“The teachers have done a really good job for their first time dipping into dual-language strategies,” he says. “They’ve picked up a lot of different techniques to make sure kids are acquiring language first and foremost and then layering that over the academic portion.”
The team will use the upcoming year as an opportunity to continue improving and fine-tuning the program at Virgie Robinson Elementary with the goal of beginning training next spring to add similar dual-language classrooms in the 2027-28 school year.
Enrollment in ECEAP classrooms for the 2026-27 school year is currently open for eligible children who are 3-4 years old by August 31, 2026. Interest forms and more information are available at
www.esd123.org/eceap.