How does a district move a reclassification rate from 2% to 15% in four years — and make sure students know their achievement is worth celebrating? This session presents Sequoia Union High School District's longitudinal research-practice effort to build a data-driven reclassification system grounded in policy, practitioner support, community engagement, and joyful public recognition of multilingual student achievement. Drawing on six years of site-level reclassification data, a revised policy bulletin codifying expanded pathways to RFEP status, and barrier research conducted in partnership with the John W. Gardner Center at Stanford, presenters will share how SUHSD established internal goals, built annual measurement routines, and created three-cycle engagement structures for Bilingual Resource Teachers. This district-level work contributed to a growing statewide evidence base — including a February 2026 PACE webinar — supporting policy recommendations to reduce Criterion 4 barriers across California. Alongside the technical systems work, we will share how bilingual Board recognition ceremonies — centering students' multilingual identities as superpowers, not just compliance outcomes — transformed how families, practitioners, and students themselves understood what reclassification means. Designed for district researchers, EL coordinators, and administrators, this session offers replicable tools and evidence that systems-level focus on reclassification produces real results.
