Caught Between Two Educational Systems : Education: Children of migrant workers face constant disruptions and distinct teaching methods. But some school officials try to break the destructive pattern.

Half the year, Ernesto Robledo puts on blue jeans and a T-shirt and walks about a mile to school, just like any other fifth-grader at Park Avenue School in Yuba City, Calif.

The other six months, he dresses in the crimson sweater, white shirt and checked pants uniform of the Altamirano Grade School, six dirt blocks from his home here in central Mexico.

Ten-year-old Ernesto is one of 103 children at Park Avenue--and possibly thousands throughout the United States--who are being educated in two nations. Their migrant parents move them back and forth across the border according to crop seasons and family economics, with little regard for the school calendar.

This pattern of constant interruptions, of changes in teachers and subjects, has worked against the schooling of migrant children for generations. Students often get so far behind that they become discouraged and drop out, eventually replacing their parents at seasonal farm jobs and other low-wage work.

“There are enormous difficulties that these kids experience when they are caught between two educational systems,” said Linda Cohee, principal at Park Avenue, which has the largest population of migrant students in any school north of Fresno. “We are trying to help kids get out of the pattern and get a better education.”

But breaking the pattern is not easy. Two sets of bureaucracies, two languages, two curricula and two distinct teaching methods often conflict.

Although U.S. schools--despite the disapproval of many voters--try with variable success to educate migrant children, the centralized and inflexible Mexican bureaucracy does little to accommodate them.

Children in Mexico are required to attend school through eighth grade. But in practice, little is done to discourage truancy. The government acknowledges the existence of migrant students in a two-page memorandum outlining requirements for admitting children coming from U.S. schools. But severe underfunding leaves many rural schools unenthusiastic about meeting their needs.

“We would really rather not enroll them because they are here for two months and then they go,” said Miguel Moreno, education inspector in Cotija. “It’s a lot of paperwork for nothing. We have tried to make it easier, though. We no longer ask for authorization from the consulate in their U.S. city.”

In fact, teachers and administrators here still recall with admiration the visit that Abel Franco, Park Avenue’s bilingual education coordinator, paid two years ago to try to smooth out enrollment procedures and harmonize curricula.

“We were touched that he was so concerned about these children,” said Jaime Moreno, principal at one of the schools Franco visited.

Migrant children have been a longtime concern for Franco, a Mexican citizen.

“When I came in 1985 to Park Avenue School, I noticed many children migrated to Mexico, Northern California and Oregon,” he said. “They were missing out on school.”

He started putting together packets of material for children to take with them while they were away. About the time of Franco’s visit to Mexico, Park Avenue School officials set up four academic calendars to accommodate migrant children.

Ernesto is on a calendar for children who live at the state-run migrant camp for farm workers. Classes start when the camp opens in May and end when it closes in October. Ernesto’s classmates include children from three Mexican states.

When the camp shuts down, the family moves back to Mexico and he starts school here, with schoolmates arriving from Modesto, Santa Ana, Orlando, Fla., and New Rochelle, N.Y.

As a result, he is in school 12 months a year, said his mother, Herlinda.

“It’s OK,” Ernesto says of switching schools. “I like both schools about the same. I have friends both places.”

Ernesto, who is bilingual, is doing fine, both in his schoolwork and socially, said his teacher in Cotija, Valentin Castro. But that is not true for all his transnational schoolmates.

“A lot of them do not know how to write well in Spanish,” said Principal Maria Dolores Agustin. “They cannot take dictation. Many are not at the grade level indicated on their grade cards.”

Besides Spanish, many children also have trouble in history because they learn little Mexican history in U.S. schools and vice versa.

Paperwork remains an overwhelming problem as well.

Because of red tape, Erica Garcia is auditing second grade. Her father, who works at a San Juan Capistrano shipbuilding firm, took the family home to San Juanico, a village just outside Cotija, last Christmas. Deciding that he could no longer afford to support his five children in California, he announced that the family would be staying in Mexico when he returned to the United States.

In January, 8-year-old Erica and her 9-year-old sister, Jessica, started back to classes in a rural schoolhouse overlooking a cornfield and San Juanico Lake. Principal Froilando Ramos said they could sit in on classes until their report cards arrived from San Juan Capistrano Elementary School and their U.S. birth certificates could be translated.

Nearly a year later, Ramos is still waiting.

School officials in San Juan Capistrano said all the father has to do is ask and they will give him a copy of the records. However, the girls’ mother, Gracia Sandoval, said he has tried and been unable to get the records.

The girls, who had lived all their lives in California, are finding the adjustment to school life in Mexico difficult.

“We don’t have swings here,” said Erica, looking out on a schoolyard that has only a rope strung across two posts for a makeshift volleyball court.

“I miss my teachers,” Jessica said. “The teachers there don’t paddle us. And here they do.”

Learning in Two Lands

Breaking a pattern of neglect, schools in Cotija, Mexico, and Yuba City, Calif., are collaborating to track the educational progress of migrant students who split their time between the two towns roughly 1,780 miles apart.