The CALPADS SELA file collects Student Language Acquisition Status (ELAS) information.  The SELA file should be uploaded to CALPADS for the following situations:

  • Upon enrollment of a NEW student (brand new SSID) in grades kindergarten through twelfth grade. (Student has no existing ELAS records in CALPADS.)
  • When a student has a valid change in their ELAS 
  • When any K–12 student with an ELAS of “TBD” has that status for more than 90 days from the ELAS Start Date.


Districts do not need to update the ELAS of incoming students transferring from another California school whose statuses already exist in CALPADS. Instead, districts should update their student information system with students’ ELAS in CALPADS. 


To accommodate this, an import process has been added to Aeries to import student’s existing CALPADS Student Language Acquisition Status (ELAS) information.  The SELA Import process will import CALPADS data into two Aeries Language fields. 


The data will then be evaluated when creating the Aeries SELA extract file.  Students with matching data in the new CALPADS fields and in Aeries will not be extracted.



Note:  The SELA Import should be run at the beginning of the school year before uploading the first SELA file for the year to CALPADS and periodically throughout the year.   This will ensure that all students in your database have the most recent CALPADS Student Language Acquisition Status (ELAS) information. 


The fields are located on the Language form: ELAS Code (LAC.EAC) and ELAS Date (LAC.EAD).  These fields are available as read only fields in the school and district in both Aeries Client and Aeries Web version.  They are informational only and can only be updated with the Import SELA process.



The following procedures are recommended to maintain the most current ELAS data in Aeries and CALPADS (details provided in the following articles):

  • Download the CALPADS Student  English Language Acquisition Status ODS Download file and import into Aeries to populate the ELAS Code (LAC.EAC) and ELAS Date (LAC.EAD) fields
  • Run the SELA Conflict report and review.
  • Create a new SELA file via Aeries and upload to CALPADS
  • The next day, Download the CALPADS Student  English Language Acquisition Status ODS Download file again and repeat the process.  The conflict errors will be reduced after the SELA import and the subsequent SELA files are uploaded to CALPADS.