Our Team
Lynda Idle - M.Ed., CLDE, Educational Consultant, Owner
Specializes in: CLDE, Standards-Based Education, Dual Identified EL/SPED Students, Assessment and Data Analysis
Lynda Espinoza Idle has been an educator for over 35 years starting in 1987 in a migrant bilingual school in South San Antonio, TX. She has been a teacher, principal, and district administrator in Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. She completed her BS Degree in Elementary Education and Elementary Reading from the University of Texas at Austin in 1987 and her MA in Educational Leadership/Administration from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in 1993. She completed her Colorado Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Education (CLDE) Graduate Endorsement Program from Colorado State University in Pueblo in 2017 to complement her New Mexico ESL certification.
As a principal in Albuquerque, New Mexico she was visited by First Lady Laura Bush in 2006 for her innovative programs in “Helping America’s Youth” Initiative. Then in 2008 she was one of 300 Educators invited to the White House for their contributions. She was awarded the “Excellence in Education” Award for her and her school’s development and support of the collaborative program “Albuquerque READS” between Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) and the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce.
Her last two years in APS, she was the District Instructional Manager for Standards-Based Education (SBE), Elementary Curriculum, and Response to Instruction (RTI). Her Classroom Institute for Standards-Based Education trained over 500 APS teachers and principals with high reviews. Lynda has presented nationally at the Council of Great City Schools and National Staff Development Council on Standards-Based Education and Staff Development in a large district. She has national certification from the Leading & Learning Center in SBE, Curriculum Mapping, and Data Driven Decision Making as well as from the Southern Regional Educational Board (SREB) training and certification in Leading Others, Curriculum Mapping, and Formative Assessment. She also was trained and certified in Cognitive Coaching and Collaborative Learning Communities under Bruce Wellman and Laura Lipton.
Since moving to Colorado in 2008, Lynda has been an ESL Director in three districts in Colorado Springs. She was part of the collaborative team of District ESL Directors that helped the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) write and implement the Colorado Department of Higher Education Teacher Quality Grant. Her collaboration in this grant enabled her to co-train 50 teachers across 5 districts with UCCS. She is a collaborative member of the Pikes Peak ESL Directors Forum which consists of the 10 districts in the Pikes Peak Region and UCCS that meet monthly to share resources and trainings for the CLDE programs in the region.
Lynda was also the Senior Consultant at the Colorado Department of Education (CDE), Office of Literacy supporting EL Literacy to districts across the state and the implementation of the READ ACT for ELs. She provided technical support and ELD training across the state. At CDE she also supported district and school Unified Improvement Plan (UIP) reviews, Spanish assessment reviews, and Instructional Program reviews. She collaborated across departments in supporting the education of ELs across the state.
As a CLDE District Director, Lynda facilitated her last district in winning the “ELPA Excellence” Award for being one of the districts with the highest ELD growth in the state for SY 2015 and SY 2016. Lynda has provided teachers in the Pikes Peak Region with a CDE Approved CLDE 45-Hr PD program to meet the renewal requirement for Colorado Teacher Licensing. Her CLDE 45-Hr PD Program has been completed by over 150 teachers from the Pikes Peak Region with excellent reviews. She has been a member of CDE CLDE Stakeholder’s working groups on Redesignation of ELs, EL CLDE Guidebook Revisions, Long Term ELs, ACCESS Implementation, and CELP Standards Implementation. As a District Director, Lynda helped represent Colorado in the National Working Group of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) in Washington DC, to create the national CCSSO “English Learners with Disabilities Guide”. The best practices and examples of their work can be found in this publication for other school districts to replicate. Lynda was named the Colorado Department of Education’s 2020 “Distinguished Administrator in support of Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Education”.
Lynda has presented over the past 12 years regionally and at state conferences in Colorado at CoTESOL, CDE LCE/CLDE Leadership Academy, CDE Equity and Excellence Symposiums, READING in the Rockies Conference and CASE on EL Instruction, MTSS for ELs and Reading Instruction for ELs. Lynda has also co-presented with CDE at regional symposiums on Identifying and Serving Dually Identified EL/SpEd Students.
Lynda co-presented with Fran Herbert at the TESOL 2021 International Convention as an invited speaker on “Identifying, Referring, and Servicing Dually Identified EL/SpEd Students”, with great reviews from across the country. She had her co-authored article published in the TESOL Newsletter “Difference and Disability Matters” March 2021 edition on the same topic. She and Fran Herbert have co-presented on “Dually Identified EL/SpEd Students'' at Florida TESOL (SSTESOL) in 2021, 2022 and 2023, CoTESOL in November 2019, 2021, “Courage to Risk” Annual Conference in January 2022, National Association of Bilingual Educators (NABE) Convention in 2022 and 2023, and the TESOL International Convention in 2021, 2022 and 2023 and Northern New England TESOL in 2022. She and Fran also were asked to be part of two national panels on “Dually Identified EL/SpEd” services at the National Association of English Language Program Administrator 2022 Conference (NAELPA) in NYC and at TESOL 2022. Lynda has been an active board member in the local state affiliate Colorado TESOL for the last five years and was the President in 2022. She also sits on the NAELPA Professional Learning Committee.
Lynda is the Co-Owner and Lead Instructor for RISE PD. Lynda started RISE PD with her Co-Owner Fran Herbert and daughter (also an educator) Abby Idle in 2021. Their goal is to support educators in implementing a strategic instructional approaches where learning is the focus, and there is increased achievement with all students. Her CDE Approved CLDE 45-Hr PD Program has been taken by over 250 Colorado Educators and has been met with rave reviews.
Lynda is passionate about supporting the Multilingual community and teacher education in English Language Development and strives to be a role model for minorities. She enjoys spending time with her husband of 34 years, a retired Air Force officer, and with her two grown children, a middle school science teacher and a college student. She enjoys reading and watching movies with her family.
To see past Professional Trainings: CLICK HERE
Fran Herbert - M.Ed., CCC-SLP, Lead Educational Consultant, Owner
Specializes in: SPED, SLP, Dual Identified EL/SPED Students
With 40 years’ experience in special education, Fran Herbert, is an educational consultant working with districts in Colorado and other states providing technical assistance with second language learning students (ELs) suspected of having a disability.
Fran is a Speech/Language Pathologist who has worked in both the clinical and educational fields with a focus on bilingual speech and language development. She has also been an adjunct instructor at CU-Boulder, UNC and UCCS with Teacher and SLP prep program at these Universities.
As a previous Director of Early Intervention and a Supervisor at the Colorado Department of Education (CDE), Fran led a team in developing policies, procedures, and monitoring for compliance in the provision of special education services for all students with Individual Education Programs (IEPs) in the state of Colorado and on a national level. She was a participant in the Unified Improvement Plan (UIP) review process at the CDE with a focus on dually identified ELs.
She led the development of the "Culturally and/or Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Resource Toolkit" and facilitated numerous training on the appropriate referral, identification, and servicing of ELs and special education at the CDE in preventing disproportionate representation of ELs in special education throughout the state of Colorado from 2006 – 2016. Fran helped develop and was a lead presenter of the CDE EL/SpEd Symposium 2016 -2018.
On a national level, Fran has consultant with WestEd in developing training modules for the California Department of Education on referral process and identification of ELs suspected of having a disability in 2020. As a member of Chief Council of School State Officers (CCSSO) Fran collaborated with the Center of Applied Linguistics on adapting Marzano’s and Davidson Framework for ELs Student s in 2019.
Recently, Fran co-presented at the TESOL 2021 International Convention as an invited speaker on “Identifying, Referring, and Servicing Dually Identified EL/SpEd Students” with great reviews from across the country. She had her co-authored article published in the TESOL Newsletter Difference and Disability Matters March 2021 edition on the same topic. Fran also co-presented as a virtual guest lecturer for the University of Southern California Teacher Prep Program in March 2021 on this topic.
Abigail Idle - BA Biology, Sec. Education Endorsement, Educational Consultant
Specializes in Science Education, Educational Technology
Abigail Idle graduated from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs with a degree in Biology and Secondary Science Education endorsement.
She has worked as a middle school Science teacher and was the Science Team lead for her school. In addition to this, she was selected to support her school as one of the two ELT(E-Learning Team) leads which provided guidance and training to teachers during their transition to remote learning.
She worked with her district to develop the curriculum for middle school Science based on the new NGSS Colorado Science standards.
Additionally, she has worked to train teachers at both the school and district levels on how to integrate and use technology in the classroom. She is currently working on her master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction focusing on science education.