NaveganteAZ.com<\/a>, a website that acts as a directory of dual-language programs in Arizona.\u00a0<\/p>\nUsing Navegante, families can narrow their program search by zip code or address, school district, language, grade level and school letter grade. There\u2019s also the option to search by map view.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Phoenix Country Day School sophomore was inspired to create the resource when he saw the need firsthand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI looked into this and I thought, \u2018Wow, there must be so many other kids like her,\u2019\u201d Saenz said, adding that the statistics he read were alarming.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the United States Department of Education, only 60% of Arizona\u2019s English learner (EL) students graduated from high school in the 2021-22 school year, compared to 77% of all Arizona students.<\/p>\n
In his research about English learner education, Saenz learned about 50\/50 models, or dual language immersion, and came to the conclusion that not only are programs hard to find, but that there is simply not enough awareness about them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy parents didn’t even know dual language (models) existed in Arizona, and it’s because, for so long, it didn’t,\u201d Saenz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In January 2020, the Arizona State Board of Education approved the Dual Language Model, allowing schools to teach EL students in English for half of the school day and in a partner language for the other half of the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a relatively new thing, and Arizona is kind of behind the game,\u201d Saenz continued. \u201cBut now that we have it, and more and more programs are coming out with it, I think people deserve to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Arizona Department of Education does not maintain a directory of schools with dual language models.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess that motivated me even more to fill the gap that had been left by the lack of the directory and hopefully spread more awareness that these programs do exist and where to find them,\u201d Saenz said.<\/p>\n
Saenz said he wanted to centralize information about 50\/50 programs in Arizona and make it easily accessible to parents across Arizona. That idea became Navegante.<\/p>\n
He has some coding experience, having served as the captain of a robotics team in the past, but admitted that creating a resource like this was not something he could have done on his own.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Saenz used artificial intelligence (AI) coding tools, including Claude Code, Cursor and Perplexity AI, to build Navegante. He also built in AI features, such as a quiz that matches users with schools and programs based on their preferences.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is one of the reasons why I really support AI for students, because it’s served as an equalizer for so many students, like me, that didn’t get a formal computer science education \u2014 we can now build really cool projects that are helping our community just using AI,\u201d Saenz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One tool he used in development \u2014 suggested by Arizona State Board of Education member Jason Catanese \u2014 was an AI web-scraping tool that Saenz used to scan school districts\u2019 board meeting minutes and identify dual-language programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He also collected data manually, reaching out to school districts and individual schools about their program offerings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Collecting the data was one of the biggest challenges in building the website, Saenz said.<\/p>\n
Before launching the site, he spent about three months collecting data, coding and meeting with community organizations, nonprofits and education leaders across the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He sought community feedback from multiple areas of expertise, including from the Helios Education Foundation, the Arizona Dual Language Immersion Network and Arizona Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (AZTESOL).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Saenz also credited Arizona State Board of Education member Jason Catanese, who connected him with education leaders across the state. He also thanked Shannon Etz, project director of constituent services for the State Board of Education, for her early support and feedback.<\/p>\n
With the idea that Navegante will be a self-correcting, open-source directory that continues growing, Saenz said user feedback is a major focus. Families can submit programs not yet listed, report inaccuracies or share their experiences using the site.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Launched less than two months ago, the site has already reached about 400 users and logged more than 1,000 page views, with plans to build out a small team to support outreach and social media growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But for Saenz, the impact of the site is already clear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He\u2019s already received his first support request from a father in Pima, a rural Graham County town, searching for a dual language program for his child.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so happy that day, because the feeling that someone on the other end of the internet is using your site and getting value \u2014 and their kid is going to get an entirely, maybe better, education than they would have otherwise if they didn’t have this resource \u2014 it’s been super fulfilling for me,\u201d Saenz said.<\/p>\n
Saenz, vice chair of the Arizona State Board of Education\u2019s student advisory panel who also participates in his school\u2019s debate team, said the goal moving forward is to keep growing Navegante, and ensure that every Arizona family looking for a dual language program can find one that works for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This story is made possible through grant funding from the Arizona Local News Foundation\u2019s Arizona Community Collaborative Fund.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"16-year-old Emilio Saenz saw a need in his community and spent months building Naveganteaz.com, an online directory of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":790710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,202118,1587,322899,319802,322898,1589,279542,67,190350,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-790709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-arizona-state-board-of-education","11":"tag-az","12":"tag-dual-language-model","13":"tag-emilio-saenz","14":"tag-navegante","15":"tag-phoenix","16":"tag-phoenix-country-day-school","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-department-of-education","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116560795269587079","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}