COSTA MESA : Students Learn How to Move Up

While most high school students try to spend their summers anywhere but in a classroom, a few dozen students from migrant families have diligently attended a summer program to help them complete their high school requirements.

The program, sponsored by the Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s Migrant Program, is designed to help students whose families have moved frequently while seeking agricultural or seasonal work, program coordinator Tony Valenzuela said.

In four years of high school, students have to pass 72 proficiency tests that require skills in English, math and social studies. Because some families continue to follow the seasonal work wherever it is, these students fall behind not only in the classroom but in the tests required for graduation.

In addition to moving frequently, language is another big barrier for the students, Valenzuela said.

“For some of them who speak little English, a lot of this doesn’t make any sense,” he said, flipping through a composition book the students study to pass their test.

Advisers who run the program also take the students to colleges and universities in the area, where they are introduced to a different environment and given a better understanding of their goals.

“It gives us an idea on the colleges and our careers and lets us meet other people,” one student said.

Ana De La Torre, 14, passed all her proficiency tests in eighth grade and in the summer program, except in her least-favorite subject, social studies.

“It’s boring,” she said. But, she added, the help she has received in the program will make her high school years easier because she has already mastered some of the problems posed to juniors and seniors as she prepares to enter her freshman year.

Some of the students said their families have not moved in many years. However, Valenzuela said students can qualify for the migrant services if their families have at some time relocated to acquire seasonal work.

Still, other families continue to migrate throughout the state and beyond, to Texas, Florida, Colorado and back. The strawberry fields, citrus orchards, canneries, nurseries and other agricultural jobs regularly call them back during the year.

Carolina Aguiar, who works as an adviser to students throughout the school year at Costa Mesa High School, said some of her students do not know where they will be in the coming year. The mobility and the unpredictable locations make it even more difficult for the students to complete their high school graduation requirements, she said.

Aguiar and adviser Jessie Valenzuela at Estancia High School work with the migrant students to make sure they take the right classes, keep up their grades and pass their proficiency tests.

“They act like a counselor because the counselors are overwhelmed and there are no Hispanic counselors,” Tony Valenzuela said. “It’s not that they (counselors) don’t care about the students, but these kids get sent to two-year colleges and vocational schools. The counselors don’t refer them to the four-year colleges.”