Kids with parents who have seasonal agricultural jobs often face educational disruptions and other challenges during the school year, as their families move back and forth between different cities or even states to pursue steady work.
The Migrant Education Program (MEP) – which serves approximately 2,000 pre-K through high school students enrolled in public, charter and private schools across the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) – aims to support these students and their family members through a variety of in-person and online educational and enrichment programs, services and workshops.
The federally-funded program – offered through LAUSD’s Multilingual Multicultural Education Department (MMED) – is available to qualifying kids from families who work in the agricultural industry, but is not limited to farmworkers, explained Dr. Victor Gonzalez, coordinator of MEP.
“The Migrant Education Program services the families of migrant farm workers or agricultural workers, but it’s not just for families that work in the fields,” said Gonzalez, noting that some work in fisheries, meat packing or in forestry. A key qualifying factor is that a family has been forced to relocate or regularly has to move – between LA County and the Central Valley or Arizona, for example – “because of the seasonal nature of their work in agriculture,” he said.
The overarching goal of MEP, said Gonzalez, is to support the student’s educational journey and help lessen the potential negative impacts resulting from repeated moves in and out of different schools and districts. On average, he continued, students who participate in the program attend three different schools in a single academic year and often end up performing below grade level.
“Our core mission is to support the academic achievement of each of these students,” said Gonzalez, adding that MEP helps students meet or surpass state and district standards.
To help students get or stay on track and fill in the gaps in their education, MEP offers Saturday school, after school instruction, summer school, speech and debate contests, and academic pentathlon competitions, featuring math, language arts, science, social studies and the arts.
“For the last two years, we’ve had 100% of our [MEP] students graduate,” said Gonzalez. “Obviously, we can’t take all the credit for that … but we like to think we do play a part in that success. We have a counselor that’s focused solely on our high school students, and she visits all of the students throughout the year to make sure that they are on track to graduate. And if they’re not on track to graduate, [she] finds out why and tries to find solutions for those problems.”
In addition to providing academic support, the program also offers “enriching experiences for these families that they might not have otherwise … because of the nature of their [frequent moves],” he added. Enrichment opportunities include music instruction in the fall, dance lessons in the spring and an art teacher during summer school. Also, in partnership with the LA Zoo, students take multiple field trips to the zoo and get the opportunity to speak with zoologists.
MEP also provides supportive services for parents, pointed out Gonzalez, including workshops in both English and Spanish that address a range of topics: from “Family Reading” and “Activities that Support Early Literacy” to “Understanding Your Child” and “Suicide Prevention.”
“Sometimes these parents just need an opportunity to share their struggles with each other, with like-experienced people … to discuss their [questions] and challenges,” he said. “We try to build a sense of community with them. … That’s part of our strategy to address the whole family. … We strive to build bridges in schools and beyond to support our families.”
To learn more about the Migrant Education Program, call (213) 241-0510 or go to: www.lausd.org/mep.