Latino Influx Tests Schools in the South

The concrete and corrugated-steel chicken plants loom over this northeast Georgia town’s Latino neighborhoods like medieval castles.

When Maria Turcios’ parents came to Gainesville from El Salvador more than a dozen years ago, they looked up to those plants as their hope for a better life. But to 16-year-old Maria and others who followed that first generation of immigrants, a job hanging birds 12 hours a day would be a sign of failure.

Two years ago, Maria’s family paid a “coyote” $8,000 to smuggle her to the United States in a stifling, dark truck compartment beneath boxes of bananas. They pushed her to learn English and when she recently fell behind in her studies, her mother used the threat of a job on the chicken line to get her to buckle down.

“I want to have a future,” the shy girl with the wavy black hair and almond eyes says in Spanish. “But if my mother puts me to work, that future would disappear.”

Maria’s future and the South’s are intertwined.

Eight of the top 10 counties with the most explosive growth in school-aged Latino populations from 1990-2003 were in the South. In Hall County, of which Gainesville is the seat, that growth was 676%.

Federal law mandates that public schools educate immigrants, documented or not. And recent studies have criticized the way Southern schools have dealt with the influx, citing inconsistent approaches that often don’t give Latinos enough support to reverse a regional dropout rate that’s far higher than the national average -- 10 points higher among foreign-born Latinos.

A North Carolina think tank issued a “State of the South” report last year saying too many low-income and minority youth attend “isolated, resource-poor schools” that leave this booming population ill equipped for the future. The report warned “a new apartheid is gripping Southern education, less visible but just as lethal as the old form.”

This winter, the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute of Los Angeles decried the lack of comprehensive plans to integrate this growing demographic into the South’s educational institutions.

“Given Latino immigrants’ and the children of immigrants’ alienation from school, the financial barriers to college, and the lure of immediate income from manual labor jobs,” the report stated, “many are opting for low-skill professions with little hope of career advancement.”

As people across the South have come to understand, Latino immigrants are no longer a predominantly transient population, but have come to stay. The boom is a way of life, and places like Gainesville present a picture of how educating this growing population comes with both pitfalls and promise.

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Signs at the Mexico-Texas border beckon immigrants to Gainesville, “The Poultry Capital of the World,” and many have heeded the call. They make up more than 90% of the area’s butchering and meat-processing workers.

Their influence is seen on the Atlanta Highway, where signs in the bright greens, reds and oranges of Central and South American flags advertise taquerias, tortillerias and carnicerias. A financial institution is advertised as “Un banco que entiende tu idioma” (“A bank that understands your language”).

Nestled in a dip between a carpet factory and several chicken plants, the Catalina subdivision offers neat white, yellow or green houses, “De un y dos pisos” -- one or two stories -- starting at $99,900. A utility box in the middle of the neighborhood bears the tags of a Mexican gang.

Latinos now make up 51% of the Gainesville city schools’ student population, and 27% in the Hall County district.

Lyman Hall Elementary sits halfway between Catalina and several chicken plants. It’s listed as 94% Latino. Although little or no Spanish is allowed in classrooms, it flows freely in hallways.

In a fifth-grade science lab, teacher Gayla Pierce is giving a test on Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion. She reads each question aloud, over-enunciating to make sure her students understand.

“These are your an-swers,” she says, holding up a word list. “You may want to glance over them and make sure you re-mem-ber.”

When Pierce started at the school in 1988, she might have had two Spanish speakers in class. Today, nearly all 17 are Latino. “We have a very small percentage that comprehend everything,” she says.

Ana Davila, 11, has to comprehend because, as with many of her classmates, there’s little help waiting for her at home.

Ana was born in Gainesville, but her Mexican-born mother speaks little English and refuses to learn. In fifth grade, Ana has already gone about as far in school as her mother did.

“I consider myself lucky for going to school,” she says.

Despite an immersion program for newcomers and the hiring of at least one Spanish-speaking teacher for each grade, the school’s 2004 state test scores were 52% in English/language arts and 53% in math. Lyman Hall achieved adequate yearly progress when the federal No Child Left Behind Act took effect, but last year, it fell into the “needs improvement” category.

Principal Crandall Autry says the law is unfair to a school like his. “I don’t want to sound like having high expectations is a bad thing,” he says. “But if you’ve got a racehorse from Kentucky, and I’ve got a mule ... I’m going to finish pretty well -- for a mule. And the mule is the language.”

A few miles away in the city school district, Gainesville Elementary Principal Shawn McCollough is trying to convince students that they’re all thoroughbreds. Signs everywhere declare this a “90-90-90” school -- 90% minority, 90% poor, 90% pass rate on state tests. Across the doorway in the main hallway, a banner blares: “No Excuses!”

Gainesville Elementary students -- 70% are Latino; most of the rest are black -- scored 89% in English/language arts and 94% in math last year. That got them a mention in President Bush’s speech at last year’s Republican National Convention.

McCollough instituted after-school and Saturday programs for at-risk kids that amounted to the equivalent of an eight-day school week for some. He and his staff made 153 home visits -- often to find out why a student wasn’t in Saturday class -- and staged 52 parent workshops last year for Latino families.

“The Hispanic immigrant population in the Southeast brings extraordinary challenges to the table,” McCollough says. “Teachers and principals have to bring an extraordinary commitment and effort to meet those challenges.”

That means 15 minutes for recess instead of the half hour Karina Garcia got at her last school. But she’s not complaining. “Recess is important,” says the fifth-grader with dreams of becoming an astronaut. “But learning is even more important.”

It is important not just for the young.

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At 8 a.m., Luis Guerra is seated behind a laptop at Hall County’s McEver Elementary School. Five hours earlier, the 29-year-old Mexican immigrant was finishing an 11-hour shift weighing chickens at the Fildale Farms plant.

Guerra’s is one of 40 Latino families in the school’s Even Start program. Parents and children learn English side by side, and the adults learn to do things many of their parents never did with them, such as read to their children or help with homework.

Guerra made it only to middle school before dropping out and heading to California to work in a furniture factory. Now, his job allows him barely an hour each day to help his daughter and son with their homework.

He is determined to be a good example for them. “I tell them, ‘You have to be prepared for the future,’ ” he says, twiddling fingers still stained from last night’s work. “ ‘Not like me, having to work 12 hours a day.’ ”

Both the county and city schools have instituted intensive programs for high school-age immigrants who arrive with little or no English -- and perhaps little formal schooling in their home countries. But the federal law that mandates public education for immigrants applies only until students reach 21.

For Jose Herrera, 17, it’s a race against the clock.

Back in Guanajuato, Mexico, Jose dropped out in the eighth grade.

His three older brothers also dropped out of school and came to Gainesville to work in the plants. Last year, they paid for Jose to follow them -- but not to follow in their footsteps.

Jose goes to the public Phoenix Academy, where he gets intensive training in his new language. Students read along in English as a teacher reads in Spanish; they map stories, establishing cause and effect; they even draw pictures to illustrate what they’re learning.

Jose says his brothers are always after him about his homework and warn him to get in bed by 10.

“I’m thinking about my future, about my children,” he says. “I want to have something to offer my children.”

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In Gainesville, as in many places around the South, Latinos have already surpassed blacks as the “majority minority.” They’ve also overtaken blacks on standardized tests, prompting the district to launch an “African American initiative” to close the achievement gap.

Despite their growing numbers, there are no Latinos on the city’s school board, which has three white and two black members. At a recent meeting, the only Latinos present were a visiting scholar and a parent volunteer.

“The Mexican population doesn’t have a voice in the Southeast,” McCollough says.

A growing anti-immigrant movement is sweeping the South, with groups in Arkansas and other states calling for the withdrawal of services from undocumented immigrants. Georgia is one of many states that deny in-state tuition rates to undocumented immigrants wanting to attend state schools, making it even harder for them to afford higher education.

But the notion that this is a wholly transient population is quickly becoming outdated. Of the nearly 200 Spanish-speaking children registered at Gainesville’s International Center for kindergarten, 81% were born in the city.

“The floodgates are already open,” McCollough says. “The shift has occurred. They’re here.”

Arlet Ramirez, a Gainesville fifth-grader whose parents work in the poultry plants, says she appreciates the opportunities she’s received. And she thinks that others should look at her education as an investment.

“It’s like inheriting,” says Arlet, who hopes to be a doctor. “You put your hard work into it and then you help someone else.”