The first year of the Dual Language Immersion program at Hackett and Robinson Elementary schools has been a success, and the bilingual kindergarten students will move on to the first grade, reports Beloit Connection.

“It’s just a great opportunity. We have a larger population of kids who speak Spanish in their house. A lot of districts want to start a program like ours, but they don’t have enough Spanish speaking students to pair up with the English speaking students,” said Rosamaria Laursen, ELL program manager to Beloit Connection. “For the purposes of our program we are fortunate our Spanish speaking population is higher in all areas of the district.”

According to the online edition of the Beloit Daily News, the number of Spanish speaking students in the Beloit district, Wisconsin, is at about 20 percent, with the Hispanic population near 30 percent. Read the complete story here.