About

Our School

Located in Old Town Lafayette, Escuela Bilingüe Pioneer is a 90/10 dual immersion bilingual focus school where all students enroll through the district’s open-enrollment process. An effort is made to balance students based upon their home language and language of dominance. There is a bi-literacy instructional focus across the school as students work toward building bridges between Spanish and English. A multilingual perspective is infused throughout the curriculum. Pioneer students benefit from 80 minutes of instruction in physical education, music, art, library and technology each week. Additionally, Pioneer values community partnerships to offer a variety of after-school enrichment. This school also offers free and tuition preschool classes that have a focus on both academic and developmental learning standards.

Program Characteristics

The dual immersion program at Escuela Bilingüe Pioneer is designed to achieve its goals by following a carefully planned model. This model ensures that students fully develop a second language while maintaining strong skills in their first. The program is based on extensive studies conducted by experts in the field of education and linguistics which indicate that the dual language model is the most effective of all second language development programs. (Thomas & Collier, 2001) Research shows that it takes between five and seven years to develop a second language and two or three more years to develop a proficient level of academic language. (Cummins, 1979, 1986; Thomas & Collier, 1995, 2001)

Special Programs and Opportunities

Pioneer has programs designed to meet the individual needs of students. Programs that serve all students and families: the Family Literacy Program (adult literacy and GED certification), Pioneer Preschool, Full day kindergarten, School-wide Title I (literacy teachers teach small groups for targeted instruction), Talented and Gifted (services for English and Spanish speakers), 80 minutes weekly of technology, library, art, music and physical education, two recess periods daily, Student Mediators, School Age Childcare(SAC), and 3:20+ school clubs such as dance, Destination Imagination, drumming, Legos, marbles, leadership club, knitting, Thorne, CATCH, soccer, chess, computer programming, English, homework club, raptor club, library club, nature art, theatre, drumming, service-learning, etc.

I love Pioneer because I make friends that speak English and Spanish. I love understanding everyone's language and helping create a mix between the two making it one whole.Tiziana, Class of 2027 

students racing

Pioneer is an amazing bilingual school. The teachers are so great and nice, and you get to learn Spanish. I feel lucky I went to school at Pioneer!Leo Hinojosa, class of 2027

Pioneer is really special to me. The teachers are really nice and always ready to teach and make the students have fun.Maxuel, class of 2029