Classes for Children of Migrants Bear Fruit

Children of Moorpark’s migrant farm workers are learning to overcome educational barriers, including language, through classes given by the local school district under a federally subsidized program.

And officials of the Moorpark Unified School District say the tutoring program, which began in the 1960s, but has been greatly expanded in recent years, has started to produce results.

“We have students from last year now enrolled at UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine and at Moorpark College,” said Lenna Reyes, coordinator of the district’s Migrant Education Program.

The success stories in the program, which received $135,000 in federal money this year, give hope to younger students of primarily Latino families, who have often moved from agricultural regions across the state and from Mexico, Reyes said.

Origin of Problems

“You have problems in school when you move from district to district, when you come from low-income families where English isn’t spoken at home, and when you have a great deal of chores such as taking care of brothers and sisters,” Reyes said.

Because the rent for most of the area’s homes is so high, many of the students live in crowded households, where finding a quiet place to study is all but impossible, Reyes said.

Special classes are held at Moorpark Memorial Union High School, at Chaparral Middle School and at three district elementary schools.

About 380 of the district’s 4,000 kindergarten through 12th-grade students are enrolled in the program, Reyes said. Most speak little or no English when they arrive, she said. To qualify for the program, either one or both parents must be working in agriculture and must have left the area in search of work at least once in the past six years, she said.

About 75 kindergarten and grammar school students attend Saturday sessions, from 10 to 20 middle school students attend daily sessions before regular school classes and about 40 high school students attend daily sessions after regular classes.

The rest are tutored by bilingual teachers’ aides during regular classes. Some of the aides interpret for the students and others help them understand written assignments.

“This has helped me get better grades,” said Martha Camacho, 15, an eighth-grader whose family moved from Mexico to Moorpark three years ago. She said she wants to become a nurse.

The classes are conducted much like a study hall, Reyes said. The program’s two middle school teachers and the students’ regular teachers daily assess areas in which students need extra work.

“We talk with their teachers a lot because we don’t want to wait until the students bring home a bad report card before they start getting help,” said Chaparral teacher Jeannie Kingsford.

The program’s goal is to stem the district’s 50% dropout rate among children of migrant workers, Reyes said.

Such children often leave school before graduating to work or to raise their own families, Reyes said. But the migrant workers’ attitudes toward their children’s education are starting to change, she said.

“This year parents in the program have raised $1,000 through dinners and raffles for a scholarship fund,” Reyes said.