PALM BEACH POST April 17, 2005 Migrant students' success hailed Palm Beach Post Staff Writer They're the unlucky kids, the students with the odds stacked so high against them that the school system has a program designed to keep them from falling through the cracks. Students from migrant-worker families can face a plethora of problems — money, language, a family history of minimal education — and succeed anyway. With about 200 students showing up on Saturday, twenty seniors in the Title I Migrant Education Program were awarded college scholarships and many more were honored in other ways during the school district's annual Migrant Recognition Luncheon at the Hilton Airport. Each of them, it seemed, had a tale to tell. Angelica Hernandez's parents dropped out in the eighth grade. But she won a $1,500 scholarship, the top amount given, and collected an award for top academic achiever in the Title I program, with a 4.1 grade point average. Hernandez, from Pahokee Middle/Senior High School, was born in the Dominican Republic and is headed to Florida State University next year to study sports medicine. Her dad is a 16-hour-day mechanic at the Okeelanta sugar mill and her mom is a custodian at Gove Elementary School in Belle Glade. Still, they find time to help with schoolwork — once she finds space to do it in a house with five other kids, she said. "I usually just go lock myself in a room," Hernandez said. Her mom, Dalida, said in Spanish, "I was the proudest mom in the world." Both of them had to wipe away tears of joy. The Title I program provides tutoring and helps students clear up questions about their academic records as they move from state to state. It also broadens their social horizons, often by taking field trips and doing things that they may not do very often. For instance, "when we're away, we always go out to eat," program manager Mary Jane Ford said. Keynote speaker Jim Warford, the chancellor for kindergarten through 12th grade for Florida schools, told students he could relate. He was born in poor, rural Kentucky to a single mother who was an eighth-grade dropout. "Your success is sweet," he told the students. "Your success means so much more because for many of you students and teachers it was so much harder won." Luis Paniagua, who also received a $1,500 scholarship, moved from Mexico at age 4. He also attends Pahokee High. "My parents always told me, 'You don't want to work in the fields,' " he said. Though he plans to attend Florida Atlantic University next year to study mechanical engineering, life is still tough: He still spends his summers toiling in the fields with his family. And his parents couldn't attend Saturday's ceremony because his father had to work and his mother had no transportation. Cristobal Acosta, who won a $500 scholarship, said he used to feel awkward because of the language barrier. But an interest in theater helped him break out of his shell. He used to have a C average, but now has a 3.2 grade-point average at Glades Central High School. Acosta, who plans to attend the University of South Florida to study athletic training, said his parents worked hard in the sugar-cane fields to provide life's basics. His mother, he said, "pushed me to be great." "She told me that was the reason for her to come to the United States, so that her kids would have a better education."
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