Background & Context
Hempstead Elementary sits in a small rural town of about 5,000 people in Texas. The campus serves 820 students — 95% of whom are economically disadvantaged, 65% Hispanic, and 40.5% Emergent Bilingual. About 30% receive special education services.
On paper, those numbers can look like obstacles. Principal William Jeffrey sees them differently.
"Hempstead families are sending us their best — and they give us their best every single time."
Mr. Jeffrey came to education the long way around. He started as a bilingual teacher at a Title I high school in Houston, fell in love with the work, and never looked back. When he became principal at Hempstead, he brought that same conviction with him: that students from under-resourced communities don't just deserve a chance — they deserve a system built to help them exceed every expectation.
That's exactly what he set out to build.
The Challenge
Hempstead's Emergent Bilingual students arrived with real barriers — language acquisition, socioeconomic pressures, and limited access to the kind of enrichment experiences that build academic vocabulary over time. Teachers were working hard, but they needed tools that were aligned, easy to implement, and engaging enough to cut through everything competing for students' attention.
Previous approaches lacked the structure and visual design needed to drive consistent language growth. Without a platform that aligned directly to TELPAS and state standards, it was hard to build the kind of systematic, measurable progress the campus was after. Teachers needed something they could build around — not just a resource, but a foundation.
The campus also needed to strengthen sheltered instructional practices across every classroom, not just in ELD blocks. Language development couldn't live in one room. It had to become part of how the whole school operated.
The Search for a Better Solution
Mr. Jeffrey was looking for a platform that could do a few things at once: support language development across all four domains, align tightly to TELPAS, motivate students to engage daily, and make it easy to build systems and incentives around measurable growth.
He also needed buy-in — from teachers, from district leadership, and from students themselves. A tool that only works when someone is watching isn't a system. It's a task.
Summit K12's Connect to Literacy™ checked every box.
"It has a track record of growing students — and it only gets better year by year." — Principal William Jeffrey
The Solution
Connect to Literacy™ was built directly into the master schedule at Hempstead. During that dedicated block, students log in, work at their level, and are pulled into small groups for targeted instruction. Teachers sit beside them — guiding, reinforcing, and building proficiency in real time.
The district built incentive systems around the platform. Students earn points. They work toward rewards. They track their own growth. And because the program prepares them so well for TELPAS, those incentives feel earned — not arbitrary.
"It's so visual. It prepares them so well for TELPAS — it's easy to build incentives and systems around it."
Something shifted. Students stopped seeing language practice as something done to them. They started chasing it.
"They were ferociously trying to get what we were giving them."
Teachers noticed it too. Sheltered instructional practices — the strategies that make grade-level content accessible while students are still developing English — started showing up across the whole campus, not just in dedicated ELD time. Mr. Ayumada leaned in. Ms. Pantoha, who had built the foundational groundwork with her students, watched them take off.
"It's almost like watching greatness happen. It's hard to explain — but when you see it, it's an amazing thing."
Mr. Jeffrey puts his role simply:
"I get to catch the football in the end zone."
Most Impactful Features
- Highly visual, student-friendly design that drives daily engagement
- Tight alignment to TELPAS expectations and TEKS standards
- Easy integration into dedicated instructional time and MTSS frameworks
- Built-in progress tracking that supports incentive systems
- Reinforcement of sheltered instructional practices across the campus
Ongoing Partnership and Support
Summit K12 didn't just deliver a product — it delivered a platform that keeps improving. Mr. Jeffrey noted that year over year, the program gets stronger. That consistency matters in a campus environment where teachers are already stretched and need tools they can rely on.
District leadership supported the implementation from the top down — providing tracking systems, incentives, and the dedicated schedule time that signals to students and teachers alike: this matters.
Mr. Jeffrey's vision? Use Connect to Literacy™ exclusively for MTSS across the campus.
"I've asked for it. I love it. It just makes it easy to build programs and supports around it."
The Results
Hempstead's Emergent Bilingual students didn't just grow. They outperformed native English speakers across the state of Texas — within a single school year.
- EB students outperforming native English speakers statewide in one year
- Increased teacher engagement in sheltered instructional practices campus-wide
- Stronger MTSS structures built around measurable language growth
And they're not done.
"We're leading the state on that— and if not, we will by next year." — Principal William Jeffrey
