English Learner Advisory Committee

This chapter analyzes the work of the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC). This group primarily consisted of immigrant mothers from Mexico in collaboration with teachers; as the chapter shows, ELAC increasingly aligned its efforts with other parent communities over the course of the research. The group’s central goal was to support the reclassification of English learners at the school as Fully English Proficient. To this end, ELAC pursued two measures for improving reclassification outcomes: the intensification of home literacy activity, and budgetary activism in the context of the Local Control Accountability Program. Given that ELAC meetings were the only official public spaces where parents and school staff regularly performed bilingualism together, this chapter highlights the use of translation and interpretation as part of translingual practice.