About the Office
The Office of Bilingual Education (OBE) was established in 1969 as the unit within the New York State Education Department (NYSED) which provides support to districts in developing and implementing educational programs for English language learner (ELL) students. Under the guidance of OBE more than 520 districts currently implement educational programs and services for the nearly 220,000 ELL students in the state. These students come from over 170 language backgrounds. In early 2006, Foreign Language Studies (FLS) was added to the department title and today the department is known as the Office of Bilingual Education and World Languages (OBE-WL).